Tesla asks for tip-in

What's the best way to generate a consumer and press backlash? First get that buzz happening with a steady stream of press hubris about the stars and tsars paying top dollar to join a 12 month queue for your product. Add sauce by serving up your young billionaire entrepreneur CEO to sell the whole scintillating tale of an idea and a product whose time has come to everyone from USA Today to Vanity Fair.

Then turn up in Washington rattling a tin for up to US$400 million, claiming you're in big trouble just like the rest of the auto industry. Californian electro-sports car maker Tesla Motors has set the blogosphere on fire doing just that following Washington's announcement that it has earmarked US$25 billion for cheap loans to winch the industry out of its current hole.

Tesla's all-electric Roadster is swift, silent and pretty. It's a two-seater with enough bootspace for a litre of Evian, big sunglasses and a basic make-up kit. With a retail price of US$109,000 it's clearly not here for the benefit of Mom-and-Pop consumers. 

So New York Times columnist Randall Stross struck a chord in November when he asked why, with hordes of multimillionaires passing up the opportunity to invest in an enterprise peddling a product as brazenly elitist as this one, taxpayers should come up with the money. Especially, say others, for an outfit whose track record extends to 100 sales to date.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who made billions in a past life selling the PayPal online payment system to eBay, is counting on an exponential development trajectory for lithium-ion battery technology. He's dangling the carrot of a more affordable, family-oriented Tesla car. But it doesn't happen, he says, without a leg-up from Washington.