We Obsessively Cover the Green Scene…

Julie Christie, the rumors are true. After plenty of hint-dropping over the past few months, Tesla officially released 2013 first quarter (Q1) financial details today, and it was the first quarter in which the ten-year-old company was actually profitable. CEO Elon Musk, speaking on a conference call to investors today, made it clear that the numbers are good, but behind-the-scenes factors make them even better.

Take, for example, Tesla's capital expenditures. The automaker was profitable in Q1 despite spending a lot of money on things like new stores and Supercharger stations, things that won't require as much money moving forward. Tesla says it plans to spend about $200 million on capital expenditures in 2013. Or how about the Tesla's gross margin, which grew from eight percent to 17 percent from Q4 2012 to Q1 2013. That's the average for the whole quarter, Musk said, and "the gross margin at the end of Q1 was much better than at the beginning."

The call wasn't all about money-rolling-in news. We knew Tesla would make money selling zero emission vehicle (ZEV) credits to other automakers, and it did, to the tune of approximately $68 million (12 percent of revenues). Musk said Tesla expects ZEV credit revenue to decline throughout the year, going to zero in Q4. The shareholder letter reads, "We expect this to decline significantly in future quarters, as ZEV credits will only apply to about 1/6 of worldwide deliveries, versus roughly half of US deliveries, and the price per credit has declined." Some estimates put Tesla's annual ZEV credit income at $250 million.

More numbers and tidbits from the announcement can be seen below.

Our friend Theophilus Chin has a thing for creating Tesla vehicles that we can't have. Earlier this year, he made a digital Model ST wagon appear and he's now back with a sleek Tesla Model S Coupe. The rendered results, which you can see in the gallery, are an elegant, smaller take on the nearly universally praised Model S design from Franz von Holzhausen. Chin writes, "There's a huge market for an electric 2+2 GT. And I feel Tesla has the right product for that niche."

As he did with the ST, the front end is left intact, with all of the changes happening in the rear. At its core, this is just a Model S with the second set of doors removed and Chin has so smoothly meshed the lines so that you almost don't notice anything's missing at first glance. We can only speculate what the smaller size would mean for reduced battery pack capacity, and if the new style would make up for the expected range loss. Which leads us to this important question: does the Model S coupe still have a frunk? Also, does the car appeal to you?

Looks like Tesla might be hiding more in its software than blind spot detection and adaptive cruise control. According to Bloomberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is "discussing" autonomous cars with Google, specifically the Lidar laser tracking system. Oh, and if you're going to have a self-driving future Tesla vehicle, then you shouldn't call it autonomous. Instead, Musk prefers the term autopilot. As he told Bloomberg, "Self-driving sounds like it's going to do something you don't want it to do. Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars."

Any Tesla robot chauffeur is a ways away – Musk Tweeted it is "still a few years from production," but Google has been working hard on driverless cars (with green cred, too, since the test mules are mostly Toyota Prius hybrids). In fact, the search company says the technology could be ready for prime time in as little as three to five years – though safety regulations and other logistical questions will likely push that back, perhaps a decade. The government's work on self-driving vehicles is mostly the purview of DARPA and its Urban Challenge and Grand Challenge test courses.

Musk says – surprise – that Tesla's system is better than what's come before, telling Bloomberg, "The problem with Google's current approach is that the sensor system is too expensive. Its better to have an optical system, basically cameras with software that is able to figure out what's going on just by looking at things." He did try to quell excitement about the idea of a driverless Telsa by Tweeting, "Am a fan of Larry, Sergey & Google in general, but self-driving cars comments to Bloomberg were just off-the-cuff. No big announcement here."

Last year, Toyota won the electric title at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with the Toyota Motorsport GmbH EV P001 in a time of 10 minutes, 15.380 seconds for the 12.42-mile uphill course. For the 91st running of the demanding event, which will take place at the end of June, TMG is coming back with the EV P002, once again with Rod Millen behind the wheel.

TMG says that its engineers have spent the downtime between climbs "generating more performance" from the Radical-based vehicle by increasing motor speed and torque (oh, and setting new records on the Nürburgring). The P002 now has a top speed of 142.9 miles per hour, 1200 newton meters of maximum torque and 400 kW of maximum power. Before the annual climb, the EV P0002 will get aerodynamic upgrades and more track testing. A Schneider Electric EVlink DC charger will charge the P0002's 42-kWh lithium ion ceramic battery on race day. All these upgrades and the history of record-setting gave Claudia Brasse, TMG's executive coordinator of strategic EV development, reason to call the TMG EV P002 the "standard bearer for electric race cars."

We will see if Toyota will still claim the title after Millen fights off a challenge by Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima, who will be piloting the Monster Sport E-Runner up Pike's Peak. Last year, Tajima's run was shortened due to fire.

"We decided we were wrong and other people were right and we decided to fix it."

A month ago, Tesla Motors announced what it called a "revolutionary" financing option, and waved some magic pixie dust around to come up with a monthly cost of like $500. Today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced a bunch of changes to the financing options and to Tesla's online calculator to be more realistic and better represent people's real-world costs. Despite an early reshuffling of the numbers, Tesla got a lot of negative feedback regarding the pixie dust and today, Musk said, "We decided we were wrong and other people were right and we decided to fix it."

Here are some of the changes:

• Most importantly, Tesla has raised the guaranteed resale value to be the highest of any luxury sedan made in volume. That means that a "leased" Model S will be worth more than the average resale value of all Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Lexus or Jaguar vehicles in the same price range (based on ALG resale value numbers).
• In the online calculator, where Tesla talks about the "true cost of ownership," many defaults have been changed. The "time saved" option is now turned off, the expected gas price has been lowered, the MPG of the gas car has been raised. In short, the defaults are more conservative, but anyone can still enter any values that apply to them.

Tesla financing partners are now also offering longer-term loans (72 months instead of 63) that will "reduce the monthly payment considerably," Tesla says. Tesla's new numbers, featuring less pixie dust, are "a monthly rate of $580 taking only gasoline savings into account" and, if you buy the car for business and we assume that 70 percent of the miles are for business use, the "effective monthly cost" is just $315. Musk said he believes that financing (or leasing, as most of us call it) is the right way to buy an electric car because, "it really highlights the savings you get form gasoline every month."

Musk said that so far, around 20-25 percent of the Model S vehicles sold since the financing options were announced have been financed, and that he expects this number to jump to 60 percent or more in the future. Early birds who jumped at the chance in April don't need to fret, since the improvements to the financial offering will be retroactive to anyone who already took advantage of the Tesla financing.

As before, the value guarantee is backed by Musk's personal money and he remains as confident as ever that his company is on the right track. "If we really believe we are making the best car, it should have the best resale value," he said.

It's pretty by the ocean. So pretty that it feels like 80 percent of all car commercials are filmed on winding coastal roads (another 80 percent are filmed on mountains and another 80 on mysteriously car-free roads elsewhere). It's particularly pretty in Humboldt County, California, which the USDA has named "America's Most Scenic Rural County." So, it makes sense that you'd want to film a Ram truck commercial there. What doesn't make sense is getting that truck stuck in the tidepools, overnight, then submerged as the ocean came rolling in.

"Whether they knew they were out of the boundaries or not I do not know."

But that's exactly what happened to a crew trying to film an ad for a Ram 2500 Power Wagon yesterday. As reported in the Lost Coast Outpost, the truck was being shot on Luffenholtz Beach near Moonstone Beach. Humboldt County Film Commission commissioner Cassandra Hesseltine told AutoblogGreen that, from what she knows, the crew was permitted to be there, but in a different area and they went out of the boundary. "Whether they knew they were out of the boundaries or not I do not know," she said. A local wrote into Lost Coast Outpost to say that off-road vehicles are always forbidden on the specific area of the beach where the truck spent the night in the ocean, because of endangered species that live there.

In any case, the truck was eventually towed today and local environmental services and hazmat crews checked out the scene and, based on what Hesseltine was told, there was, "no environmental damage from liquids leaking out" and she was not aware of any damage to the rocks or ground. Part of the reason there were no leaked liquids, she said, was that this was a brand new truck, with many engine components sealed.

Jennifer Savage, from the local Humboldt Surfrider foundation, told AutoblogGreen that she is extremely dismayed by the film crew's lack of foresight. "It's easy to imagine," she said. "They were driving the truck on the beach, they wanted it to look cool, so they put it on the rocks, and they blew it. The word 'idiots' has been thrown around here a lot today."

Savage said that, after a visit to the site once the truck was pulled out, "At a glance, it does not appear a lot of damage was done, but I'm not a scientist. Still, it's pretty disrespectful. I have a truck, and I don't drive there." She said the incident shows a lack of respect for the beach and that Surfrider will follow up to see if any damage was done.

Hesseltine said this is the first time something like this has happened and that the film commission "prides itself on taking responsibility for environmental concerns. We do not take this [truck issue] lightly. We're happy to know that environmental services has said there is no impact as far as fluids go. We usually do really well taking care of our precious resources." For example, the new Will Smith movie After Earth was shot in Humboldt, and the crews were required to be extremely careful while filming among the redwood trees. "They had to be very careful," she said, "and they were."

It's a classic car dealer move: offer extra special deals as the monthly calendar winds down and, presto, you've boosted your sales totals. When it comes to the 2012 Mitsubishi i (the current model), something needed to be done, since Mitsubishi only sold 31 examples in March. Towards the end of April, Mitsubishi offered an eye-popping $10,000 in dealer cash on the engine-free hood of the all-electric i (or i-MiEV, as it is also known). With the dealer cash and a federal tax rebate worth up to $7,500, Mitsubishi's Dan Irvin said April was "a good time to buy an i-MiEV." The i starts at $29,125 and shoppers still needed to negotiate with the dealership on final price, of course.

The deal is over now, but when it was still going on, Irvin told Autoblog there was "plenty of inventory to accommodate this promotion." He said he didn't know the number of 2012 i-MiEVs remaining in the US, but the end result was that 127 were sold last month.

Even with the extra money, April i sales did not reach the lofty (as it were) heights of January and February, when 257 and 337 of the Mitsubishi EVs were sold, respectively. The i has been the subject of low, low prices before, including a cell-phone-like lease of $69 a month.

Starting production of the all-electric Leaf in Tennessee helped Nissan sell more Leafs in the US in March 2013 than in any other month. April wasn't quite as sunny, but the 1,937 Leafs sold last month were still good enough for second place. Ever. It also represents a 423.5 percent year-over-year increase and Nissan says that, so far in 2013, Leaf sales are up 160.4 percent compared to the same time frame in 2012. April also marked the second month in a row that the Leaf beat the Chevrolet Volt. The two vehicles use different drivetrains, but Nissan, at least, considers the other popular plug-in its competition.

It's not that General Motors had a bad month. The 1,306 Volts sold last month were roughly in line with March and February (but it's a downward trending line, with 1,626 sold in February and 1,478 in March). 2013 April Volt sales were down 10.7 percent from April 2012 but, year-to-date, Volt sales are up 3.2 percent in 2013 compared to 2012.

As always, we'll have our detailed write-up of last month's green car sales up soon. For now, discuss.

Anyone who had Coda Automotive in your office pool for the next electric vehicle maker to declare bankruptcy, go on and collect your winnings. Coda announced today it will restructure as an energy storage business after voluntarily filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the District of Delaware. The automaker said it expects the sale process to last 45 days.

The writing has been on the wall for a long while now, with store closings and layoffs following low sales of the startup's all-electric Sedan. The official restructuring also makes a sort of sense, since Coda's plan for at least the last 15 months has been to offer an energy storage business called Coda Energy. In today's press release announcing the bankruptcy, Coda says:

Coda Energy's products are based on the same core technology, which includes its proprietary battery management and thermal management systems, found in CODA's vehicles adapted for stationary energy storage applications. The Company designs and builds scalable, custom energy storage solutions optimized for generation, distribution and behind-the-meter applications for commercial, residential and industrial end users. The Company is currently shipping product, and has a robust pipeline of new customers and existing installations in the field.

So, Coda is dead. Long live the Coda?

In recent days, Tesla Motors stock (TSLA) has been climbing and climbing, hitting a high of $58.18 earlier today before closing at a respectable $53.99. The rise comes amid a string of headline-making events – higher-than-expected sales, franchise dealer fights and a new warranty program, to name just three – but under all of the good news lies a potential problem. The Wall Street Journal revealed today that Tesla was served subpoenas from US federal prosecutors over details on the company's trading plan for executives. There has been no hint of wrongdoing, the feds just want information, Reuters reports. A similar subpoena was sent to Cardiovascular Systems, which makes medical implements.

The question is how the executives can trade their shares. Reuters reports that it is fine by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules for executives to use something called a 10b5-1 plan to trade their own stock, "even when they have access to private information." The subpoena does not seem to have anything to do with questions over whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk's recent "overzealous" Tweet was in any way illegal.

This week, analysts at Longboard Asset Management said they believe Tesla common stock will hit $100 in the next 18 months on the way to $200 per share within five years. In any case, we'll have more information ammunition for the debate when Tesla releases first quarter results May 8th.

The trajectory of Wheego Electric Cars is light years away from the always-in-the-news Tesla Motors or the Congressional darlings Fisker Automotive. Despite the lack of attention, Wheego manages to keep on plugging away, adding new dealers and making it past regulatory hurdles. This low-key route is entirely by design.

Wheego CEO Mike McQuary recently told Plug In Cars that the key has been to not overestimate demand for the LiFe EV, a small two-seater from an unknown company. "We've always had a realistic expectation of what the market will be. We build a batch of cars and we sell them," he said. The biggest group of consumers has turned out to retirees, McQuary told PIC.

Building on its small but stable base, Wheego is planning expanding its line-up to include an electric SUV at some point in the next year. Like the LiFe, this new model will use a body made in China along with US components. The expected prices is $44,000 (before any government incentives). The LiFe starts at $32,995.

Wheego, which is based in Atlanta, has always been associated with China, since that's where its vehicle bodies come from. The company will soon have more formal ties there, McQuary said, because a new assembly line in China should be up and running within 12 months. Looks like the next year will be a busy one for quiet Wheego.

The 2013 Nissan Leaf was improved thanks to customer input and, earlier this year, Nissan started building the all-electric car in Tennessee (and, of course, now also in the UK). These two changes helped the world's best-selling EV reach its the best month of US sales ever in March – we look forward to seeing what the April numbers are, which we should be getting in the very near future. We know domestic production reduced costs, since Nissan was happy to tout that angle, but it wasn't until recently that media representatives were allowed inside to see how the company is building the car and battery pack.

We will have a detailed write-up on Nissan's moves in Smyrna, TN for you soon. Until then, you can see the Leaf being built in the time-lapse video below, courtesy of local newspaper, The Tennessean. The audio is not worth listening to, but the images are somehow mesmerizing.

With a title like "Green Energy Oversight: Examining the Department of Energy's Bad Bet on Fisker Automotive" it was no surprise that the slant of today's Congressional hearing by the House Oversight subcommittee on Economic Growth, Job Creation, and Regulatory Affairs was overwhelmingly negative. In fact, for over three hours, it was perhaps the definition of political theater. After all, where else do you get to hear a House of Representatives member (Gerald Connolly, D-VA) say the hearing was like a Soviet show-trial while Darell Issa (R-CA) compared Henrik Fisker (co-founder of Fisker Automotive and a witness today) to Bricklin and Tucker? Oh, and Issa also said Fisker made mistakes that failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney would not have made his first day out of business school. All this and more was on display today in Washington, DC.

The hearing was incredibly – and unsurprisingly – political, with Democrats speaking positively about the overall DOE loan program and Republicans attacking Fisker for taking $192 million (almost always rounded up to $200 million) and not paying it back. Not yet, anyway. Both Fisker (who made it clear he was not speaking for the company, since his official connections have ended) and Fisker COO Bernhard Koehler said that Fisker has not yet lost any taxpayer money, and Koehler said there are still plans in place to pay everything back. Fisker's take was that there is a lot of value left in the automaker that could be brought to bear on paying the DOE back. Of course, Fisker's official website has been down all day, in case you were looking for one more sign that things are not going well for the California automaker.

It's getting harder and harder to be the first/best/most electric vehicle in the US market. Most range goes to the Tesla Model S. First all-electric of the current generation goes to the Nissan Leaf or the Tesla Roadster, depending on your viewpoint. Best? Well, that's in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

We do have a new entry for "most efficient," though, which apparently goes to the Chevrolet Spark EV. That's what General Motors announced today, along with an official EPA-estimated range of 82 miles. That's less than the Fiat 500e, which is rated at 87 miles. GM's "most efficient" claim can't come from the way the Chevy commands its 82 miles from a 21-kWh lithium-ion battery pack, despite the fact that the Fiat needs 24-kWh to go an extra five miles. The Honda Fit EV is more efficient here, since is uses a 20-kWH pack to also go 82 miles.

But then there's the combined city/highway (estimated) MPGe number for the all-electric Spark, which is 119. The Fit "only" gets 118, and this is the number upon which GM bases its claim, saying that 119 MPGe measures overall efficiency.

So, first/best/most? Whatever. All these EVs have roughly the same performance stats, so we have to look at other aspects to differentiate them. On that front, the Spark will be the first (ah, sorry) production vehicle with the SAE combo charger port for DC Fast Charging. This will allow the battery to get 80 percent of a full battery charge in about 20 minutes. Again, this is about the same performance as CHAdeMO DC fast charging, which is already available in the Leaf and the Mitsubishi i.