Quick, name the last automaker to go public before yesterday’s Tesla Motors IPO. Stumped?

It was Ford Motor Company. The year was 1956.

Perhaps buyers of Tesla Motors stock [NSDQ:TSLA] were optimistic because they had little context to assess the comapny. Tesla’s stock soared from its offering price of $17 to close at $23.89 by the end of yesterday, meaning Tesla Motors is now worth $2.2 billion.

Not bad for a company that’s sold just over 1,000 cars and lost almost $300 million in its seven-year life.

“The hard work starts now”

Now what? We asked a pair of industry analysts to react to the results of Tesla’s IPO and offer their opinions on what lies ahead for Tesla Motors over the next two or three years.

Two themes emerged:  First, in the word’s of PRTM’s Oliver Hazimeh, “The hard work starts now.” In other words, Tesla has more than a few hurdles ahead in getting its Model S electric sports sedan into production by 2012 (or perhaps later).

Second, neither analyst expected Tesla to remain independent.

Both agreed that the brand’s only long-term future lay in being acquired by an existing global automaker that offered the manufacturing expertise, component sets, and economies of scale Tesla desperately needs to have any hope of future profitability.

“Not a car company”

Aaron Bragman, of IHS Global Insight, closely follows auto-industry news and uses his firm’s econometric models to project vehicle demand into the future and comment on current events.

He says he’s “not all that bullish on their prospects as a business case,” and adds bluntly, “Tesla’s not a car company; they have no expertise in automaking,” since Lotus did much of the fundamental design work on the 2010 Tesla Roadster electric supercar.

Lotus also builds that car for Tesla, which claims the Model S midsize electric sports sedan it hopes to launch by the end of 2012 will be a clean-sheet design, using a basic platform that can be adapted for a variety of models, including a cabriolet, a crossover/SUV, even a van.

Competition at their heels

Oliver Hazimeh, of PRTM, covers the supply chain for the components of electric-drive vehicles–lithium-ion cells, electric motors, power electronics–as well as assessing the many market demand projections made by others.

He notes that Tesla remains a tiny niche player in the competitive global luxury car market. Unlike the Roadster’s first-in-the-world position, he adds, the Model S will face all-electric entries from several global competitors by the time it arrives in 2012 or 2013.

One challenge, he suggests, is for Tesla to figure out “what it wants to be when it grows up” in, say, 10 years. It has “quite a bit of brand equity” already, but it needs to understand how to position itself: Is it a tiny-volume player? An early-adopter icon? Or can it really ramp up to sell hundreds of thousands or millions of electric cars a decade hence?

The second challenge is how the company will achieve the economies of scale to let it make money on volumes of 20,000 Model S cars a year. “At the end of the day,” says Hazimeh, “what saved their IPO was the Toyota deal.”

New partner Toyota clearly offers a wealth of manufacturing expertise, product engineering skills, and a global parts bin second to none, all of which Tesla desperately needs.

“How do you take that to Tokyo?”

The problem is that so far, no one outside the company understands the extent and terms of the Toyota-Tesla partnership.

The most cynical explanation is that Toyota invested $50 million in Tesla,  gets back $42 million for its Fremont, California, assembly plant, and rids itself of ugly political fallout from closing the last car plant in a state where it sells huge numbers of cars.

And how Tesla’s self-assured and volatile CEO Elon Musk will interact with Toyota’s grey-suited executives remains to be seen. Musk’s behavior is well-known but, as Hazimeh asks, “How do you take that to Tokyo?”

The Tesla saga will undoubtedly produce many twists and turns in future. But it’s hard to find a single auto analyst who believes Tesla has any hope of growing as an independent automaker; the capital needs, economies of scale, and low margins of the global industry pose hurdles the company is too small and too under-capitalized to overcome.

Meanwhile, in late-day trading, the stock stayed at roughly the previous day’s price after having risen above $30 a share.

Written by John Voelcker, this post originally appeared on GreenCarReports, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners.

Tags: advanced transportation, electric vehicles

Companies: Tesla Motors, Toyota

Foursquare Raises New Funds Foursquare, a location-based social networking startup, raised $20 million from a group of venture capitalists to help fuel its expansion.

There’s one story in cleantech today: Tesla Motors‘ public sale.

The electric car maker just raised the bar on its IPO, slated for tomorrow, increasing the number of shares for sale from 11.1 million to 13.3 million. Shares are expected to price between $14 and $16, with the company’s valuation hovering around $1.5 billion.

The word on the street is that the stock is hot. Bankers and analysts alike are seeing a spike in retail investor interest, inspired mostly by hype and the objective sexiness of the vehicles themselves — both the $109,000 Roadster and the forthcoming $45,000 Model S sedan.

But even if Tesla has a blockbuster day tomorrow, there’s little guarantee that share prices will stay high. In fact, cleantech market trends all but dictate it won’t, and there are still towering hurdles standing between the company today and mass commercial success — hurdles that it will have to leap in order to keep its many shareholders happy.

Heads up, future shareholders: here are 10 of the most burning questions about the company and what it needs to do.

1) How will it keep shareholders happy when its next product isn’t due out for two years?
Right now, Tesla is betting the farm on its all electric sedan, the Model S. Problem is, it’s not due out until 2012, and if the delays the company experienced developing its Roadster (now on the market) are any indication, that deadline may get pushed back even further. In the meantime, the Roadster isn’t exactly carrying the operation. A little over 1,000 units have sold since its launch last year, and apparently only 10 cars are being sold every week at this point. How do you keep people excited about a company that’s basically pressing the pause button at the peak of its fame?

2) When will the company stop losing so much money?
Tesla has been around for seven years now, and it’s developed a couple different revenue streams. In addition to its Roadster sales, it is also supplying battery packs to one of its major stakeholders, Daimler, to use in its electric models. You would think that losses would be shrinking, but this isn’t the case. In fact they swelled from $16 million in Q1 of last year to $29.5 million in Q1 of this year. Now Tesla needs to shell out to get the NUMMI automotive plant — bought for $42 million — up and running, and to onboard hundreds to thousands of new employees. Cutting losses doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.

3) How is Tesla going to repay the government?
Tesla earned its stripes as the most promising electric vehicle company when it landed its $465 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy under the banner of its Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. This propelled it into the ranks of Ford and Nissan, which also won loans in that round, beating General Motors and Fisker Automotive. The loan is intended to cover 80 percent of Tesla’s new manufacturing operations, including NUMMI. The question is, how and when will the company be able to repay this loan?

4) How far will the company’s deal with Toyota go?
When the partnership between Tesla and the major Japanese automaker was first announced in May, the fanfare made it seem like they had a binding deal to create a new line of electric cars together. CEOs Elon Musk and Akio Toyoda stood next to each other and explained how Tesla would provide electric drive trains to bodies and built by Toyota. But a week later, it came out that this part of the deal between the two companies — which also includes Toyota’s commitment to take a $50 million stake in Tesla after its IPO — was not so set in stone. In fact, some analysts believe that Toyota never had the intention to build a car with Tesla, that it just needed a nice green boost in its public image following its recall woes. But if the tandem car deal falls apart, how will Tesla, which only plans to build 20,000 Model S sedans at the NUMMI plant a year, take advantage of the facility’s capacity to churn out 500,000 cars a year?

5) What about the relationship Tesla has with Daimler?
Daimler, the German auto maker known for its ownership of Mercedes-Benz, acquired a 10 percent stake in Tesla last May. The same deal gave Tesla access to Daimler’s commercial-scale production line technology. Before then, however, the two companies signed a contract for Tesla to provide 1,000 lithium-ion battery packs and charges for Daimler’s Smart electric vehicles. Daimler has since sold 40 percent of its holdings in the company to Abu Dhabi-based firm Aabar investments. But Daimler will still be the second largest shareholder behind Musk after the IPO, with 8 percent of shares. The question is, how will its relationship with Tesla change now that Toyota is entering the picture? Will it hold onto its shares?

6) Will Tesla be able to rely on ZEV credits for added profits?

Under California’s Zero Emissions Vehicles Mandate, major car manufacturers must build a certain percentage of zero emission vehicles. This percentage is going to go up every two years. If companies cannot hit their targets, which none of them have been in the past, they can buy credits from companies that are building zero-emission vehicles. Tesla has capitalized on this big time, selling credits to the likes of Honda and others. But now that all major automakers, like Nissan, Ford, GM and Mitsubishi, are all coming out with their own plug-in vehicles, will there be enough demand for these credits? We hear that Tesla is depending on selling every credit it is able to produce, but that is looking increasingly unlikely — especially considering that it will have more competition in this area from companies like Fisker and Coda Automotive.

7) Will it be able to hit its target of 20,000 Model S sedans?

As mentioned, Tesla’s long-term success seems to hinge on its ability to sell 20,000 units of the Model S when it comes out in 2012. None of the other cars its discussed theoretically, including the cabriolet, van and SUV it introduced during last week’s investor roadshow, are close to reality. If they happen, they will happen in 2014 or 2015. The problem is, Tesla only has about 50 retail locations worldwide, and those are the only locations where the cars are actually being sold. Yes, there are extensive plans to open up more showrooms, but again, where’s that money going to come from?

How will the Model S compete against the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf?

Tesla has captured the public’s interest for sure, but two other green cars have done a good job of generating buzz: General Motors’ Chevy Volt and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf. Both of these cars are coming out before the end of 2010. They are both made by major automakers who have the manufacturing capacity and capital to support their long-term development and sales. And both are priced for average consumers. The Leaf, in fact, could cost below $20,000 in California after government rebates. This makes it competitive with regular cars on the road, not just the plug-in hybrid and electric models. How is Tesla supposed to compete with them when it’s trailing behind by two years and plans to sell the Model S for nearly $20,000 more?

9) Will Elon Musk be able to retain control of Tesla?

As almost every article on Tesla notes, it is led by quite the colorful CEO. A co-founder of PayPal, Elon Musk has set off to build things that most little boys only dream of: electric cars and rocket ships. That’s right, his is also currently CEO of Space X, one of the private companies pursuing manned spaceflight. How can he divide his attention between these two complex ventures? On top of that, he is notoriously detail oriented in his leadership strategy, leading to delays and disagreements with former colleagues, investors and others. Attempts have actually been made to dilute his controlling interest in the company to no avail. Now he has a messy divorce and a personal financial crisis to deal with (albeit one that might be alleviated by the IPO). Will he be able to maintain control of Tesla given his increasing interest in Space X? Would Tesla command the same attention if he was not at the helm?

10) What will Tesla’s first public earnings call sound like at the end of Q2?

Recent reports have pointed out that Tesla isn’t doing so hot when it comes to sales. It has all these ambitious plans to build a new line of four Model S-based cars, but the reality is that it’s selling about ten of its luxury Roadsters a week. On top of that, and widening losses, and no surefire plans for future profit, what is Musk going to tell his new shareholders during the company’s first earnings call as a public company? It might not be a pretty picture. The company will face an unprecedented level of transparency and public scrutiny. One more reason why the IPO might be a loud pop followed by a fast fizzle.

Tags: electric vehicles

Companies: Tesla Motors

People: Elon Musk

* Foursquare close to getting new funding-WSJ * Andreessen Horowitz to provide funding-WSJ PHILADELPHIA, June 27 – Startup website Foursquare, a location-based services company, is close to getting new funding that would allow it to expand, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories published in the last seven days:

Adobe Flash gets its full launch on Android — After months of back-and-forth debate about whether Adobe’s Flash technology is a good fit for smartphones, Adobe launched a full version of Flash for mobile devices, starting with Google’s Android operating system.

Blocked: How Yahoo shut us down and why it could happen to you — Brent Stinski tells the story of how Yahoo shut down his company’s Web domain and email. The moral: Don’t be a victim of hacking.

Droid X lands today, Motorola releases Android 2.2 “FroYo” source code — Motorola lifted the curtain on its new Android phone, the Droid X, during a joint press conference with Verizon.

Apple iPhone 4 problems crop up: screen discoloration, reception issues — All is not well for lucky iPhone 4 owners who received the device early.

Updates on HTC 4G issues: Screen separation is minor, software fix coming for sensitivity trouble — It seems we struck a nerve with some HTC Evo 4G owners in our previous coverage detailing a few well-known problems with the Android device — which included reports of screen separation, and touchscreen sensitivity issues. Now there’s word that HTC is aware of the problems and has plans for fixing them.

And here are five more stories we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

The iPhone 4 hits stores — Part 1 (photo gallery) — Images from the San Francisco store launch of Apple’s hot new device.

OnLive is the easy path to instant gratification gaming — The age of instant digital game distribution got under way as OnLive launched its games on demand service, which allows you to instantly play high-end games over an Internet connection even if you have relatively lame computer hardware.

Quora, the exclusive Q-and-A from early Facebookers, opens to the public — Quora, the hot Q-and-A site from Facebook’s first chief technology officer and a coterie of its early employees, is letting down its velvet ropes.

DC Comics flies into the digital world with ComiXology — Marvel Comics made a splashy entry into the digital comics industry in April when it launched a slick comics reader for the iPhone and iPad. Now its big competitor, DC, is following suit with its own iPad app and more.

11 ways Flickr just got better – If you’re not a heavy Flickr user, you might not spot the changes in the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing service’s forthcoming redesign, to which you can opt in now. Here’s a list of key differences.

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories published in the last seven days:

Adobe Flash gets its full launch on Android — After months of back-and-forth debate about whether Adobe’s Flash technology is a good fit for smartphones, Adobe launched a full version of Flash for mobile devices, starting with Google’s Android operating system.

Blocked: How Yahoo shut us down and why it could happen to you — Brent Stinski tells the story of how Yahoo shut down his company’s Web domain and email. The moral: Don’t be a victim of hacking.

Droid X lands today, Motorola releases Android 2.2 “FroYo” source code — Motorola lifted the curtain on its new Android phone, the Droid X, during a joint press conference with Verizon.

Apple iPhone 4 problems crop up: screen discoloration, reception issues — All is not well for lucky iPhone 4 owners who received the device early.

Updates on HTC 4G issues: Screen separation is minor, software fix coming for sensitivity trouble — It seems we struck a nerve with some HTC Evo 4G owners in our previous coverage detailing a few well-known problems with the Android device — which included reports of screen separation, and touchscreen sensitivity issues. Now there’s word that HTC is aware of the problems and has plans for fixing them.

And here are five more stories we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

The iPhone 4 hits stores — Part 1 (photo gallery) — Images from the San Francisco store launch of Apple’s hot new device.

OnLive is the easy path to instant gratification gaming — The age of instant digital game distribution got under way as OnLive launched its games on demand service, which allows you to instantly play high-end games over an Internet connection even if you have relatively lame computer hardware.

Quora, the exclusive Q-and-A from early Facebookers, opens to the public — Quora, the hot Q-and-A site from Facebook’s first chief technology officer and a coterie of its early employees, is letting down its velvet ropes.

DC Comics flies into the digital world with ComiXology — Marvel Comics made a splashy entry into the digital comics industry in April when it launched a slick comics reader for the iPhone and iPad. Now its big competitor, DC, is following suit with its own iPad app and more.

11 ways Flickr just got better – If you’re not a heavy Flickr user, you might not spot the changes in the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing service’s forthcoming redesign, to which you can opt in now. Here’s a list of key differences.

Maybe it’s true: Nice guys do finish last in Silicon Valley.

When the venture capitalists at Andreessen Horowitz publicly scolded founder Dennis Crowley (right) and the others behind the fast-growing location-based check-in service Foursquare in the midst of funding negotiations in April, it seemed like Crowley had worn out the patience of the venture firm. Now, it looks like venture capitalist Ben Horowitz was playing hardball with Foursquare — and may have bluffed the company into a deal.

According to a report by AllThingsD, Andreessen Horowitz is in the process of finalizing a funding round with Foursquare, most likely to be completed early next week. Two sources familiar with the deal described it as essentially done to VentureBeat. After we asked partner Marc Andreessen for comment, his new colleague, Margit Wennmachers, said that Foursquare is “obviously an exciting startup” but that the firm had no other comment.

The road to closing the funding was serpentine, as Foursquare was talking to seemingly everybody about funding and acquisitions. The most hype focused around a sale to Facebook, which apparently came very close to acquiring the location startup, whose service allows users to announce their current location to a defined set of friends.

Foursquare was also in talks with Yahoo (reportedly pricing the company at around $100 million), and a bunch of Silicon Valley venture capitalists like Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures. But Foursquare made the misstep of talking about their plans too much publicly, which was – at least ostensibly – the reason for Andreessen Horowitz temporarily walking away.

Khosla partner Gideon Yu was reportedly keen on winning the deal. On June 13, he wrote a cryptic tweet:

“I’ll never play hardball with an entrepreneur to get a deal done, especially in public. Life is FAR too short for that…”

It’s not clear if Yu’s tweet was in reference to the bidding on Foursquare. But the dealmaking was fraught. Yu was formerly the CFO of Facebook, where Andreessen is still on the board of directors. So Yu was, in essence, bidding against his former bosses to win Foursquare.

Foursquare is seen as one of the hottest companies in the location space, although nobody is really sure what kind of business is to be made in with location-based services. The space is cluttered with many companies, most of them based around the idea of the check-in like Gowalla, Brightkite and Booyah, and everybody is expecting the social network giant Facebook to step in the arena soon – which is why a Facebook acquisition of Foursquare made for such hot speculation.

The best part of this deal? By keeping Foursquare independent, and bolstering its financial resources, Andreessen Horowitz has all but guaranteed we’re going to keep checking in on where this hot startup stands — as opposed to watching it disappear into Facebook’s fraternally welcoming arms.

Tags: location, location based services

Companies: Andreessen Horowitz, Foursquare

People: Ben Horowitz

General Electric announced today that it will be funneling $10 billion more into its cleantech research and development initiative, cleverly dubbed Ecomagination, over the next five years.

The company has seen great success with the program so far. Five years ago, it allocated $5 billion to it, and since then it’s reaped $70 million from the products and investments supported by Ecomagination ($18 million in revenues last year alone). This is a huge return on what was essentially an experimental idea.

It’s no wonder that it’s doubled up on its investment through 2015.

So far, Ecomagination has produced highly-efficient compact fluorescent lighting, smart appliances that automatically conserve energy while still doing their jobs, advanced batteries for utilities and portable electronics, innovative new wind turbines, fuel-efficient jet engines, and more. All of these products have found a niche in the existing market, generating healthy revenue.

According to GE, revenue from the products created under the banner of Ecomagination is expected to grow at double the rate of the company’s overall revenue over the next five years. That’s indicative of the rapidly increasing demand GE is observing in this area.

All told, more than 90 products have emerged from the initiative. None of the money sunk into Ecomagination will go to outside startups. Those entities are usually backed by GE’s Energy Financial Services branch and GE Capital, which have together invested $175 million in 21 companies.

In addition to the hefty investment, GE also aired news that it has cut its own greenhouse gas emissions by 22 percent in the last three years and its water consumption by 30 percent in the last four.

General Electric is just one of several massive corporations that have earmarked billions to pursue greener technologies. In April, LG Electronics said it would invest $18 billion in greening its product lines and internal practices. Sony says it will spend about as much in an attempt to dominate the green electronics market while simultaneously achieving carbon neutrality. And just last month, Samsung launched its own $21 billion green roadmap.

Companies: General Electric

Marvel Comics made a splashy entry into the digital comics industry in April when it launched a slick comics reader for the iPhone and iPad. Now its big competitor DC is following suit with its own iPad app and more.

Besides being good news for comics readers, this is a big win for New York startup ComiXology, which built the Marvel Comics app. Not only did ComiXology build the DC Comics app (iTunes link), it’s also selling DC’s books within its own ComiXology-branded app as well.

With this deal, ComiXology has enlisted the two biggest comics publishers for its plans, as well as a number of other smaller ones. All of the apps use the company’s “guided view” which helps users glide between panels by swiping their touchscreen, rather than reading a whole page at once, or awkwardly trying to zoom in to different parts of the page. ComiXology is working on a reader for your desktop Web browser), too.

In addition, DC announced a deal with Sony PlayStation to sell comics for reading on the PlayStation Portable. (Sony Online is developing a multiplayer games based on DC’s characters, called DC Universe Online.)

Comics will cost between $0.99 and and $2.99, DC said. As far as the amount as the actual content goes, DC is only selling a fraction of its library for now — about 100 issues with ComiXology and 80 issues with PlayStation, including the first issues of popular titles like Sandman and All Star Superman.

Most of the comics are at least a few months old, or are previews rather than full comics, so that they doesn’t compete directly with the comics in stores (something that store owners have understandably been concerned about). DC said it will experiment with releasing digital issues of a miniseries called Justice League: Generation Lost on the same day that they go on-sale in physical stores. Marvel has been dipping its toe into the same model, but so far only with one issue of Iron Man.

In an attempt to assuage the concerns of store owners, DC (which is owned by Warner Bros.) said it will “collect a portion of digital revenues to be invested back to and on behalf of comic book retailers in a variety of initiatives.”

There seems to be a big demand for these comics. The Marvel app has been hovering near the top of the most popular free book apps in the App Store since it launched, and today DC’s app shot past Marvel, as well as Amazon’s Kindle app, to become number two. (Number one is Apple’s own iBooks.)

Companies: comiXology, DC Comics, Warner Bros

When Twitter bought Atebits, the company behind the excellent iPhone Twitter client, Tweetie, there was some concern it would slow down development of that app. Luckily, it doesn’t look like that has happened. As today, Twitter for iPhone version 3.0.1 has just launched, and with it comes suport for both iOS 4 and iPhone 4.

In fact, while other huge apps on the iPhone, such as Facebook, lag behind in supporting the newest iPhone functionality, Twitter is one of the first to implement some of the useful new features.

So what they are supporting with this update? The actual App Store page only vaguely says the app has updated “OAuth support” and has a “Stuck top tweets fix”. But having downloaded the app just now, I can confirm that it is enabled to “multitask” — meaning you can quickly switch into and out of the app and into other background enabled apps. The app also has been customized for the new iPhone 4 Retina display, developer Loren Brichter confirms.

You can find Twitter for iPhone here in the App Store. It’s a free download.