Pictured above is the Tesla Model S “Alpha”. The Beta model, pictured below, shows further styling development. Here we are in late 2011, and that means that deliveries of the Tesla Model S are less than a year away.

All is going ahead to plan, and this past weekend Tesla held preview events for journalists and buyers at its plant in Fremont, California. Some have said Tesla’s promises will be highly difficult to deliver upon. One such person is Dan Neil of The Los Angeles Times, who bet Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk that he wouldn’t be able to deliver the car by 2012.

If Musk fails, he must give $1,000,000 to a charity. If he wins, Neil has to donate $1,000. A bit lopsided, don’t you think? The terms of the deal are numerous and state that deliveries must take place by 2012, with the same announced pricing structure intact, a four- or five-star NHSTA crash rating and the ability to seat seven passengers. With the the Model S Beta, Tesla is actually raising the bar over previous promises though with two iterations of the Model S focused on performance and efficiency.

For those who didn’t think 5.5-seconds to 60 mph was fast enough, Tesla will be releasing a Model S sport that takes that down to “under 4.5 seconds.” Another model that has special aerodynamic wheels will boost range on the top-shelf model from 300 miles to 320. Tesla is sticking to its range estimates. Hopefully they will pan out in real life; that remains to be seen. These two models will likely cost more than their standard counterparts , and we aren’t sure if they are available for the 160 and 230 mile models as well.

Tesla has been steadily moving forward with efforts on its Model S sedan, recently detailing the car’s road testing “Alpha” build. Over the past two years the company has gotten major injections of funding from private investors, Department of Energy loan guarantees and a recent Initial Public Offering.

The funding has helped secure the former Toyota-General Motors joint NUMMI factory in Freemont, California, as well as the continued development of the Model S. Tesla’s plan has always been to start at the top with a roadster and successively roll-out more inexpensive vehicles.

The Model S sedan is the second model in this plan. However, in addition to a future in the $25,000 model range, the Model S has been said to spawn other variants. The Los Angeles Times reports that will include a crossover.

With the continued success of crossovers for their space and utility, it is a segment Tesla can’t ignore if it hopes to become a full-fledged automaker.

The report says the company has begun preliminary planning for a small SUV that would go on sale in 2014. It would be small in size (presumably to help aerodynamics and weight, issues that effect range) but would offer much larger interior space due to electric drive components.

This is one of the benefits of an electric vehicle, as the Model S has displayed. Hybrid models, on the other hand, offer less interior space due to the dual components. For now, the Model S is the focus but in a cutthroat industry Tesla can’t start planning for new models soon enough.

The announcement was unplanned, and would have left Tesla with no vehicles to sell until the Model S comes into production. That is a dangerous position to be in, but it looks like Tesla has worked something out.

The latest update broke in Tesla’s March newsletter, where Tesla says that, “responding to customer demand” agreements with suppliers have been negotiated, increasing Roadster production by 40% in order to extend sales into 2012.

With those agreements in place, Tesla will continue to expand into other countries and continents like Australia and Asia. Customers in 23 countries have now taken delivery of their Roadster – the first Roadsters being delivered to customers in Spain and Ireland last month.

It is great that Tesla has secured this production increase, but it still a tricky situation. Everything needs to work like clockwork going forward.

Most recently though, Fisker has captured a lot of the attention – announcing Project NINA, getting DOE loans of its own and purchase of a former General Motors plant in Wilmington, Delaware. Despite getting the money first, Tesla’s search has taken longer. Apparently, a site has been selected for production.

Originally, a “greenfield” in San Jose was the planned location for Tesla’s manufacturing facility and headquarters. Tesla narrowed down its search to California, as the state has provided incentives that make it  attractive. A former location under consideration was in New Mexico.

One of the strings attatched to the DOE loans is the requirement for Tesla using a “brownfield” site (in order to be environmentally friendly). Using a “brownfield” means redeveloping an existing manufacturing facility.

Two cities in Southern California – Downey and Long Beach, were in the running for the Model S plant. Local newspapers in the area are breaking the news that Downey is the winner.

Downey’s Mayor Mario Guerra has told the Downey Patriot that the deal is “99.9 percent done.” Downey City Council is supposedly meeting as early as tonight to officially approve the deal. If approved, the City of Downey would turn the 80-acre site (formerly a NASA facility) over to a development company working on behalf of Tesla.

The new program is designed to offer Roadster owners peace of mind about getting their Roadsters repaired. Tesla Mobile Service Rangers can visit the Roadster where ever it is- owners’ homes, offices or parking garages and they are equipped to perform an array of procedures like annual inspections and firmware upgrades.

The service isn’t inexpensive – Tesla customers pay $1 per roundtrip mile from the nearest Tesla service center, with a minimum charge of $100. Tesla offers the example of a Tesla owner in Portland, Oregon paying $350 for a visit from the nearest Rangers in Seattle.

For owners of the Roadster, the service makes a lot of sense, being very convenient in addition to costing less than shipping the Roadster to the nearest facility. Tesla says the service even goes to places like “Honolulu, Anchorage, Banff and other locations.”

I shudder to think of the costs to do that! For Tesla’s current well-heeled clientele, I could see this program being successful. As it moves down the price ladder though, it’s going to have to figure something better out, like more widespread service centers.

Selling 20,000 units a year of the Model S is a whole lot different than selling a few hundred Roadsters per year. With the help of a (job security, anyone?) large government loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, Tesla is recruiting top talent and expertise in the automotive industry that will help it to make the transition.

The two new hires are Peter Rawlinson and Henry Brice. Rawlinson is Tesla’s new chief vehicle engineer, having worked at Corus Automotive, an engineering consulting firm. He has worked on a range of projects from Bentley to Ford.

Henry Brice is on board as the program director for the Model S, previously working at Ford where he was most recently the assistant chief engineer for the North American Fiesta program.

This is all very good news for Tesla – people that have a wealth of experience in the automotive industry are joining the company. The new positions are part of 150 job openings that Tesla plans to fill in order to deliver the Model S.

Fisker on the other hand, has taken a different tack, forging ahead with it’s Karma range-extended vehicle. It still has similar goals though to produce low-cost vehicle, and has applied for a Department of Energy loan to meet that. Henrik Fisker, Fisker’s founder and namesake, has spoken a lot about his desire to produce one. Could we be near an announcement?

We already know that Tesla has a model in the works that is even cheaper than the Model S. Fisker skipped the high-end roadster introduction, going straight to a sedan, so it seems like they might be much closer to the goal of a truly affordable vehicle than Tesla.

Earth2Tech has a report out quoting Ray Lane, a Kleiner Perkins investor, as saying Fisker will be making an announcement about the $39,000 car possibly as soon as this week or next. He let the comments slip at the AlwaysOn Going Green conference in Sausalito, California last Tuesday.

If true, it could mean that Fisker has received the Department of Energy loan guarantee that it applied for. Henrik Fisker was quoted as saying “If we get the DOE loan we will start the project this year. . . It could be in the market in as little as 26 months from when we start.”

Giving Fisker a loan also would give both Tesla and Fisker fair chance to succeed and see which one (or both) wins in the marketplace if given enough money to see their projects through. It would also continue the rivalry that has started.

In addition, the announcement of a new vehicle program and the security of a government loan guarantee would no doubt provide a boost for Fisker’s current effort with the Karma as well. Increase in orders? No doubt. If Fisker doesn’t get the loan, I’d imagine there would be some government criticism going on about why Tesla got it and Fisker didn’t.

I hope this report is true, I want to hear something from Fisker soon. If the car does make it to production, it’ll be very interesting seeing how it is positioned. Will it really have the “Wow!” factor anymore, considering that similar vehicles from major automakers like the Chevrolet Volt will be in production by that time? Bottom line – I think Fisker should get the loan, so it can continue to duke it out with Tesla. May the best car win!

If you remember, less than a year ago the situation wasn’t so pretty. The market had just crashed, a recession was upon us and money in the bank was running dry. What a remarkable turnaround! Thankfully Tesla was able to raise enough private funding to keep the company operating until profitability.

I would assume that a successful public debut and resulting strong orders (deposits!) of the Model S have played a big part in Tesla’s winning streak as well. The market is all about confidence, and Tesla has been very strong in that regard lately.

The hard part comes with actually getting the Model S to market, but let’s bask in the glow of the company’s current accomplishments. They made it this far! After some pretty lackluster initial stock photography, Tesla has released some new official shots of the Model S that are much better than the ones we saw before. Per usual, some more of the new shots can be seen below:

Each Tesla dealer is company owned and operated, which means they have the final say and control over everything. They set the prices, hire the salespeople, etc. There’s nearly no downside to the “retail outlet” method for a high-end manufacturer like Tesla.

The flagship store for Tesla’s European foray is just being opened in London, a 5,000 sq. feet showroom in the high-end Knightsbridge district, not too far from the Heathrow Airport. Other planned European locations include stores in Monaco, Munich (home to BMW) and Zurich. Over 1,300 European orders for the Roadster have already been taken, with the first 250 Signature Edition Roadsters being delivered this summer.

The first 250 are priced at £94,000 ($132,000 USD at Current Exchange Rates) but apparently a right-hand drive “entry level” (similar to the base car in the United States) will go on sale in the U.K the first quarter of next year.

It’s great that Tesla is able to keep up growth by expanding internationally; they still are working to chip down the waiting list for Roadsters in the United States and this should help ensure they’re running at full capacity for a while to come.

The ATVMP is a bill passed by Congress that awards $25 billion in loan guarantees to auto manufacturers. It is intended to spur alternative fuel development. Originally, it was expected that the Big Three automakers would benefit biggest from the program.

Given their state of bankruptcy, overall financial condition and the fact that  they received bailout loans, both were made ineligible to receive ATVMP funding.

Out of the three automakers announced today, Ford will be getting the most. $5.9 billion has been approved out of the - whoa- $11 billion it applied for. Nissan got it’s entire $1.6 billion request granted, and will use the funds to modify it’s Smyrna, Tennessee, manufacturing plant to produce 150,000 electric vehicles and 200,000 lithium-ion battery packs.

The fact that GM and Chrysler were ineligible freed up a lot of money in the program for other funding requests. I think that’s a good thing too because it will help diversify DOE investment and maybe give more of a chance to small manufacturers like Tesla and Fisker (which has also applied for the loans).

Tesla has gotten all the amount it has requested, a total of $465 million. $365 million will be used for the Model S’s engineering as well as setting up/converting the production plant . $100 million is earmarked to setup an electric powertrain plant that will make electric motors, chargers and battery packs for both Tesla as well as other automakers (Daimler?).

One of the requirements of the DOE program is that they use “brown field” sites which means an existing manufacturing site as opposed to a new one (“green field”).

Tesla is currently in the late stages of negotiations for the plant, rumored to be in Long Beach, California. Remarkable developments to be sure; I was skeptical when the request was originally announced. Tesla deserves to get a chance at succeeding though with it’s new Model S so I’m really pleased!