Flush with cash, it’s unclear why Tesla is pushing forward with an IPO at this time. The company has said it has more than enough funding to complete development of its Model S luxury sedan and construct a plant to build it. But given CEO Elon Musk’s ambitious tendencies (he’s also the founder of PayPal, SpaceX, and SolarCity), we wouldn’t be surprised if the company is considering other projects.

It also seems this may be the time to capitalize on the company’s cash position and the green car techno-boom, such as it is. The LA Times feels the “overall market for new stock offerings has been flourishing lately,” and a successful IPO would surely put Tesla on the map. It would be the first U.S. auto IPO since Ford went public in 1956. A Reuters piece suggests that the allure of such a company for venture funds is considerable, and Tesla has already attracted some high-profile investors, not to mention $465 million in low-cost government loans.

The big drawing card, I think, is not just the Model S (starting at $49,900, after a federal tax credit of $7,500). It’s the 2010 Roadster (above), whose incredible performance has enticed some 700 buyers to shell out $109,000 a copy. With add-ons that any fool would add on, the total can easily come to over $150 K. Scott Doggett of Edmunds.com gave one a good thrashing in the Marin (Calif.) hills. If you read his piece, you’ll want one, guaranteed.

So the IPO, if it comes, should appeal through Tesla’s ability to produce a mid-price, appealing luxo sedan and a state-of-the-art electric sports car for the well-heeled. The fact that the company claims great advances in battery technology will also help.

Tesla is going to have stiff competition from Nissan (the Leaf) and GM (the Volt), among others. Will its niche status enable it to survive and prosper? Give us your thoughts.

—jgoods

1985 Lamborghini Countach

If I could pick one decade to be stuck in forever, it would be the 1980s.

The girls wore leg warmers and tube tops, the guys in metal bands used more hair product than the girls, and Michael J. Fox was a major movie star (”Teen Wolf”!).

The best part of the 1980s, though, was the cars. This was a decade that finally gave everyone ample choices for whatever kind of car they wanted. The supercars of the ’80s were the stuff of dreams. Those wedge-shaped, gull-winged, super-powered Ferraris and Lamborghinis fueled an obsession for cars that could have easily gotten lost in the ’70s. The 1987 Ferrari F40 could compete with supercars of today. The 1985 Lamborghini Countach epitomized ’80s style.

Then there were the trucks. Whether you wanted an American 4×4 or Japanese reliability, you had options. The Ford Bronco and Chevy Blazer ruled the streets and the trails. Toyota placed the incredible 22R engine into its Pickup, some of which are probably still running with no maintenance other than the occasional oil change.

Even the family car was exciting in the ’80s, as the all-new Ford Taurus (and SHO!) blew the segment wide open, while imports such as the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry were in the heyday of quality and fuel efficiency. The Japanese provided us with fun, fast pocket rockets such as the Honda CRX and Acura Integra. Chrysler invented the North American minivan category with its 1984 Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager.

Even among all this, American muscle managed to make a comeback. The 1985 Chevy Camaro Z28 and IROC, along with the 1987 Pontiac Trans Am GTA satisfied the horsepower-crazed gearheads. Even the 1987 Ford Mustang GT 5.0 was a good car, if not up to the standards of, say, a 1967 Shelby GT500.

Car-wise, the 1980’s were an enthusiast’s heaven and fostered many fine memories as the excess and blah of the 1990s set in.

What are your favorite cars from the 1980s?

-tgriffith

Says Car and Driver:

In a lot of ways, the XKR is a better car than the [BMW] M6, which is a techno-overload on wheels. The Jag rides better, we prefer its styling, and it is actually quicker. It lacks the cachet of the Mercedes SL63, but is cheaper, more stylish, and less ubiquitous. We don’t think it’s as gorgeous as the Aston Martin DB9, either inside or out, but is more practical, faster, handles better, and is about 60 percent of the price.

They took it to the track as well as Ann Arbor’s streets. On the track it was “well balanced, predictable, and immensely satisfying.” There are a few minor quibbles—too-small rear seats and a weird throttle pedal—but the car could bring Jaguar back to what it was years ago. I want one; please send money.

A nice touch: acknowledging the fact that many drivers of high-powered cars just can’t cut it, Jaguar is offering free of charge to XKR and XFR buyers the “R Performance Academy,” a day at one of five U.S. tracks where they will be taught basic hard-driving skills.

Lotus, too, is trying for a renaissance and is reportedly going to bring back the Esprit (right). A new seven-year plan for the company posits that the Esprit will reappear (maybe under a new name) in 2012 as both coupe and convertible. CEO Dany Bahar wants to go head to head with Ferrari and other supercar makers.

Well, that’s a tall order, especially if you consider what the Esprit once was: a fussy, expensive, hard-to-repair tag-along to the Ferraris and Astons of the ‘80s and ‘90s. I drove a friend’s Esprit in the mid-‘80s, and it was a blast. The guy wanted to sell it to me—a dubious proposition even if I could have afforded it. But, God, it was fun to drive.

Word has it that the car will be built on the Evora platform and use an engine from BMW or Lexus. If it does use the 552-hp V10 that will power the 2011 Lexus LFA, maybe Ferrari should get out of the way.

Do you see high-performance British cars making a comeback in the next two years?

—jgoods

Luxury buyers will thus be asked to kick in to help GM defray the cost of the lithium-ion battery packs (which may run $10-12,000 for the Volt). My bet is that they will because the Converj—if it looks like the concept (as Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said it would)—will become the first dramatically styled car that GM has produced in a very long time. And the performance, one assumes, will be more than adequate.

Performance is the name of BMW’s game with the 2010 ActiveHybrid X6. According to John Voelcker of Green Car Reports, the world’s most powerful hybrid doesn’t drive at all like a hybrid. The technical details are kind of amazing, and the car performs, achieving 62 mph in 5.6 seconds (equivalent to the xDrive 50i). Freeway driving produces around 21 mpg, and the ride and handling, says John, are “smooth” and “tenaciously gripping.”

The downside of the vehicle is clearly its dog-eat-dog looks and the fact that it will set you back about $90 large or more. Oh well, that’s what it costs to buy nearly three tons of high-performance hybrid.

As tgriffith told you, SEMA produced a bunch of weird cars, as it always does. This 3-wheeler is called the eVaro, in development by Future Vehicle Technologies since 2006. Plug it in for up to 90 miles of travel, and do 0-60 in under 5 seconds (probably not both at the same time). The rated mpg is anywhere from 92 to 275. Your mileage may vary. They want to sell 10,000 of these things, which seems a mite ambitious, but it is truly an advanced concept.

Finally, it seems that hybrid sales really stepped out in October, beating the car market as a whole substantially. Details are on Edmunds’ Green Car Advisor:

Sales of Ford, General Motors, Honda, Nissan and Toyota hybrids were up 12.1 percent, while sales of conventionally powered cars and trucks were flat. The one-month picture was even rosier, as October hybrid sales jumped 22.5 percent from September’s, versus a 12.1 percent hike in sales of conventional models.

Autoblog Green carried an interesting piece covering “The Business of Plugging In” conference in Detroit. Despite persistent high battery cost and infrastructure problems, the future looks bright, especially for hybrids.

[J.D.] Power’s good-news predictions: the number of hybrid models available in the U.S. will increase from 22 today to more than 100 by 2015, and the number of “pure” (battery only) EV models will swell from one (the Tesla roadster) to at least 13 by 2012. Bad news for pure EV fans: Power says just 0.5 percent of sales (fewer than 100K units) will be pure EVs by 2015.

This doesn’t account, however, for any breakthrough in battery technology which, I’m betting, will happen within two years.

Anyone want to challenge that two-year prediction? Battery technology will improve markedly and relatively soon: Do you agree?

—jgoods

The show wrapped up yesterday, and here are the eight best cars that were there:

Delta Tech Engineering’s Suzuki Kizashi

While the stock Kizashi looks pretty darn good (for a Suzuki), this version makes it look downright hot. It was given a big open grille, a cold air intake, custom exhaust and all LED or HID lights. Sweet!

Carbon Fiber Mustang

Carbon fiber use was a bit of a theme this year, and no one used if better than Vaughn Gittin Jr. His carbon fiber RTR-C Mustang uses real carbon fiber panels, cutting about 500 pounds of weight. Only 10 cars were made, and each will cost you about $135K. But you also get a supercharger, if that helps make your decision easier.

Hennessey HP700 Camaro

Take a Corvette ZR1 LS9 engine, stuff it into a Camaro and tune it to deliver 725 hp, with 0-60 coming in 3.5 seconds. Flat-out coolest thing ever? Quite possibly.

Rhys Millen mid-engine Hyundai Genesis Coupe

We gave you a teaser of this thing a little while ago. Here’s the finished product! Car mods don’t get much more extreme than this: A 4.6-liter V8  producing 500 horses has been mounted where the back seats should be. Add a carbon fiber roof (why not, everyone else is), a body kit and before long you’ve got yourself a Ferrari-fighting Hyundai. Imagine that!

1959 Fiat 500 Funny Car

I don’t know whether to laugh or be in awe of this thing. Either way, it’s the epitome of why the SEMA Show exists. Legacy Innovations took a 1959 Fiat 500 and gave it a 725 hp (!) 427 small block. Go, little Fiat, go!

2010 Ford Raptor 6.2

Drool drool drool…

Of all the cars and trucks at SEMA, here’s one you could potentially buy from your corner Ford dealer. Even by Raptor standards, this is one extreme truck, boasting a 6.2-liter engine rated at 411 hp and equipped with more off-road capability than any one human ever needs. And it’s a bargain too… coming in at about $42K.

Pagani Zonda R

Any of the world’s most exclusive supercars get an automatic spot in my lists. Especially when outfitted in exotic carbon fiber. You kind of have to wonder though, now that carbon fiber has shown up on a Hyundai, how long before the material is remembered as sooooo 2009?

Local Motors Rally Fighter

Local Motors is showing us that a different way of building and selling cars is possible. The Rally Fighter was designed using an open-source model and will be sold by the company directly. Buyers even get to travel to a factory and help build the car with their own hands before driving it home. The Rally Fighter uses a BMW 335d drivetrain and is said to achieve 30 miles per gallon.

If you could have one of these, which one would you drive home from Vegas?

-tgriffith

2009 Ferrari California

I’m a little jealous today of people in the UAE.

Normally, I count my blessings to live somewhere that never sees 120-degree days. Occasionally, though, it would be nice to experience something a little more exotic.

Take parades, for instance. In my city, the only parades we see consist of second-rate high school marching bands. Sometimes those parades include an “exotic” car, something like a 1987 Corvette. I can only dream of what a parade of over 100 Ferraris might look and sound like.

For those living in Dubai, though, a Ferrari parade is exactly what happened as part of the inaugural festivities of the city’s new (and world’s largest) Ferrari dealer. The Italian supercars wound through the streets of the UAE and ended up at the new Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.

Lucky for us Ferrari-deprived Americans, the cameras were rolling and captured nearly 10 minutes of exotic car heaven. Check it out:

According to TopSpeed,

Among those participating in the parade included no less than some of the most important and influential personalities in Ferrari, including company chairman Luca Di Montezemolo, seven-time F1 champion, Michael Schumacher, current Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, and Giancarlo Fisichella, and the region’s ambassador to Italy, Claudio Doniosi.

That’s a pretty distinguished list of paraders… one I’d take over a marching band any day. Even if that day was 120 degrees.

Did anyone in the Dubai area see the convoy of Ferraris? If you could see 100 versions of any kind of car in a parade, what would you choose?

-tgriffith

What makes the ActiveHybrid 7 strange is BMW’s boast that it is the quickest hybrid sedan on the market. If speed is the objective, we’re not sure why a hybrid is the answer. Likewise, if fuel economy is the end goal, tuning the twin-turbo V-8 gas engine for an additional 40 hp and 30 lb-ft of torque seems silly. However, if a 7-series customer believes he needs a car more powerful than the 750i but doesn’t want to step up to the 12-cylinder 760Li—which we think he should—and also wants 15 percent or so better fuel economy, BMW has just the model.

Looking at the many entrants in the rarefied-price stratum of hybrids, the question we finally ask is “Why?” Particularly since the BMW goes head to head with the Lexus LS600h L, available now for at least two years. Why would one spend all that money to get a car that offers minimal performance and fuel economy advantages? To be hybrid hip, I guess.

Fisker has a different idea. They don’t want to build $110,000 BMW or Lexus-type hybrids but “affordable” plug-ins. We wrote last week that they were in negotiation for the old GM factory in Wilmington, Delaware, where they will reportedly build in three years a “family-oriented plug-in hybrid sedan that will come in at around $40K” after federal tax credits. The Karma S sedan (right) will start at $87,000. CEO Henrik Fisker isn’t all that concerned about engines. He told Autoweek that he “envisions a future where hybrids will get their own niche powerplants, specially tuned to the need of alternative technologies. A hybrid for example, probably doesn’t need to rev to 8,000 rpm.”

Fisker got a very good deal from a Department of Energy grant to buy and refurbish this plant, and that surely will give the company a leg up on the competition. Tesla just received a $29 million tax break from the state of California, which makes that state the likely home for the company’s future production.

Another stimulus, this one for electric car production, has come to Seattle to build a network of more than 2,000 car charging stations. “By December 2010, drivers in Seattle should be able to buy mass-produced, plug-in electrics that create no emissions and run for pennies a mile.” And the state has aggressively pursued not only federal money, which will fund this effort, but also the efforts of many hi-tech businesses that are greening up.

Another reason is that lots of “Generation Y” folks live in the Northwest, and they are partial not only to hybrid powertrains, but also to considering the purchase of Chinese or Indian brands of hybrids. This according to a study by AutoPacific reported in egmCarTech. If they are really hot for hybrids, they would do well to use the Hybrid Payback Calculator, which you can download here. It helps you determine whether the cost of a hybrid is really worth it. You enter in the car’s cost, miles per gallon, price per gallon of gas, and the estimated miles you drive in a month. Clever, eh? Maybe a prospective BMW ActiveHybrid 7 purchaser could use one.

What’s your opinion on high-priced hybrids? Are they worth it—and to whom?

—jgoods

Bad drivers know no budgets

Inspired by Honda’s newest advertising campaign, I have a theory I’d like your help proving:

Everybody knows somebody who is a bad driver.

The person I know is my grandpa. More on that, and the laughable irony behind it, later.

First, I have to wonder why people never admit to being the bad drivers. Folks are sure quick to point out if they live with one. Or are related to one. Or shared the road with one on the drive to work this morning.

Whether they admit it or not, bad drivers abound. Now there’s news that a scientific reason might be able to explain their existence. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, say they might have discovered a gene that contributes to people driving like morons (not their exact term).

This might seem like an opportunity to crack a joke, and say that we’ve always known what gene creates bad drivers: the same gene that creates females. But I’ll never stoop to the level of that joke. Especially since, in my own family, my wife has never run her car into a stationary pole. Like I have.

So perhaps you should cut the bad driver in your life some slack. He may have a genetic disability that makes it harder for him to remember basic driving rules, such as applying the brakes when the light turns yellow. Or not colliding with poles.

Instead of yelling at these people and calling them names we’d never want our children to repeat, maybe we should open special driving schools for them and give them special (extra wide) driving lanes with 20 mile-per-hour speed limits.

We could even require genetic testing before driver’s licenses are issued. When people test positive, they could get a special placard to hang on their rear-view mirrors. This would give them access to the special lanes and make them feel important, while the rest of us benefit from having the driving outcasts separated from their driving superiors.

My grandpa would definitely get a placard. I would rank him as the worst/scariest driver I’ve ever ridden with. He doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong when his tires scrape the curb at 40 miles an hour.

And that laughable irony I mentioned? He drives for a living. A school bus. And he has a commendable safety record.

Maybe, and thankfully, the gene turns off when the safety of kids is at stake.

Tell us about the worst driver you know. If it’s you, please speak up! And feel free to keep things anonymous.

-tgriffith

Other details from Auto Express:

The engine line-up will mirror that of the Panamera, so a 4.8-litre V8, with or without a turbocharger, producing 500bhp or 400bhp, will be available. The naturally aspirated variant is set to come with four or rear-wheel drive, while the range-topping turbo model will be 4WD only.

At this stage, much of what we hear is speculative, but the car does seem likely to be built, and the renderings look good. The 928 would basically fit into the Volkswagen-Porsche development plan tgriffith outlined recently. For a rear view, click on “Pictures” here.

1995 Porsche 928 GTS

For those of you too young to remember, the original 928 broke the rear-engine mold for Porsche and became (after the horrible 924) its first front-engine, water-cooled grand touring car. Built from 1977-1995, the car had lots of interesting tech features, including a rear-mounted transaxle, and I desperately wanted but could not afford one.

I still can’t afford one, but Porsche could be making a very smart move in bringing back the iconic 928. Until you get into the rarefied Ferrari-Aston Martin territory, the grand touring market is wide open.

Porsche’s development plans seem to make sense, at least so far. Do you foresee any roadblocks ahead as VW absorbs the company?

—jgoods

Now we have a far-out proposal from industrial designer Alberto Villareal for a fuel-cell-powered, drive-by-wire, solar-paneled (on the roof) taxi called MX-Libris (above), which may be just radical enough to do the job. The car won the Red Dot Design Award in 2008, and two Mexican firms have shown interest. Funding would come from the Centro de Transporte Sustentable, which promotes green transport. Go, Alberto!

Toyota FT-EV-II

Why do most electric cars look so ugly and commonplace? Do their designers deliberately turn out plug-ugly plug-ins because of some kind of group-think? These and other questions are delightfully addressed by Alice Rawsthorn in a New York Times piece. They are boring and ugly, she says, because of the problems inherent in new-car design, the reluctance of the industry to experiment and take chances, and the fears engendered by the huge investments required. As ever, however, there can be no reward without risk. Tesla has done it. Why can’t others?

New (U.S.?) Mazda 2

The Japanese want to take the lead in green car technology and production, and they are making noises as if they can and will do it. In particular, Mazda is working on the feasibility of diesels for the U.S. and, not surprisingly, they are looking at VW’s ability to market the diesel here with some success. The Mazda2 might be a diesel candidate, and there has been much speculation on what the 2008 World Car of the Year will look like, what will power it, etc., when it comes here. The car will get to the U.S. most likely in late 2010.

Honda CEO Takanobu Ito spoke out last week to a group of journalists (we mentioned it here) on Honda’s commitment to hybrids, EVs, fuel cells, and a really green, i.e., hydrogen-powered, sports car, “not like the Lexus” (the V10-powered, $375,000 Lexus LFA supercar). Plans include hybrids for the larger Honda models (Accord, etc.), but all this will take time. In any case, the CR-Z is coming soon, and that is good news.

Proof that green technology is catching on comes with the increasing competition for manufacturing facilities. Reva, the Indian carmaker, announced it was opening a plant in upstate New York; the Nissan Leaf will be made in Tennessee as well as Japan; and Fisker is redeveloping a GM plant near Wilmington, which event will naturally be announced by Delaware arch-booster Vice President Joe Biden.

Finally, we were caught up last week by a Wall Street Journal piece on “Five Technologies That Could Change Everything.” One of these is truly pie in the sky (space-based solar power panels), and another would trap and bury CO2 underground. The rest are: advanced car batteries, utility storage, and next-gen biofuels. Each clearly involves the concept of storage, which, as all car gurus know, is what finally, instrumentally, enables our vehicles to move. The costs and engineering challenges will be enormous, but in the end what choice do we really have but to move ahead? Just where to put the bets down will be the first problem.

How about letting us know what kinds of energy topics you would like to see covered in future Green Updates? Please leave us a comment.

—jgoods