• Tesla Motors announced last week that they’ve filed plans for their Initial Public Offering.
• They are seeking to raise $100 million through the IPO.
• To date, Tesla has raised $240 million from investors and VC’s as well as a $465 million loan from the DOE.

• Fisker’s been all around the blogosphere lately.  Of course we all heard about the $529 million loan they just received from the Department of Energy.
• They just opened their flagship retail store in Los Angeles with 32 planned locations across the US.
• LA Dealer, Mike Sullivan says they’ve already had 120 reservations for the plug-in hybrid, of which 2/3rd of those he says “you would recognize on the cover of a magazine.”  Even with that being said, he’s confident he’ll be able to sell 15 per month once they’re in full production.  Sounds like wishful thinking to me, judging by all the hurdles Tesla’s had to go through thus far.  That being said, if all 32 locations could keep up with Mike’s forcast, that’d be 9600 Karmas in the first year.
• Even further on the celebrity tip, we just learned that, believe or not, the Karma was actually inspired by Leonardo Dicapprio.
• It’s also not much of a surprise to hear that Tesla CEO, Elon Musk has “some reservations about the feasibility of Fisker’s approach.”  He thinks “Fisker is very far from overcoming those [engineering obstacles to build an electric car].”
• Whether Musk’s statements are valid or not doesn’t take away from the fact that it’ll be exciting to see how everything pans out for Fisker.
• I want them to succeed, I mean, how else is the price going to get driven down so I can buy one?  Keep up the good work guys.

• TinyComb’s live at the ad:tech conference in NY.
• If your company/startup is present and interested in a write-up, tweet @hohme.

1. Top 10 solar technologies to watch out for.
2. Door opens for Aptera, 3 wheelers to grab DOE green car funds.
3. How Fort Irwin just signed the largest solar farm in the department of defense’s history.
4. After Bitter Feud, hybrid car startup, Greentech plans $6.5 billion plant.
5. Tata Nano increases production to keep up with strong demand.  Like I said, a carbon emissions nightmare.

• Look at that face.  This man isn’t messing around.  He wants cleantech, and he wants it now.
• That’s why he’s made statements like this; “If it were up to me, I would put every cent into electric cars.”  I like your blunt nature, sir.
• Already, the DOE’s put billions into the auto industry for plug-in vehicles: Ford ($5.9 billion), Nissan ($1.6 billion), Tesla ($465 million) and Fisker ($528 million).
• I know a lot of people don’t like him.  I say, let’s re-visit this topic 3 years down the line, I think they’ll be singing a different tune by then.

• EcoATM, a new startup out of San Diego, just introduced their new e-cycling kiosks.
• First, the machine electronically inspects the phone for damage and automatically give it a real-time secondary market value.  If it’s actually worth something, you can opt for an in-store payment or simply donate the money to your favorite charity.  If the phone’s not worth anything, it goes into the recycling bin.
• EcoATM’s first location at the Nebraska Furniture Mart saw such success that they’ll be installing machines at wireless and big box stores in and around San Diego as well as Washington state and Vermont.
• The company is promising nationwide machines by the 2nd quarter of next year where they’ll be able to accept other gadgets like cameras, laptops, and MP3 players.  What a great startup.

• GM just sold 80% of the Hummer brand to Tengzhong and 20% to a private investor for $150 million.  They apparently have plans to manufacture a “green” hummer.  Good luck with that.

• Looks like we’ll be seeing Rock Band on the iPhone / iPod Touch relatively soon.
• From the above shot, looks very similar to Tapulous.  Do you smell an app war?
• Another interesting thing the post point towards (via MobileCrunch) is that Verizon has something to do with it.  Which further contributes to my suspicion that Verizon will launch their service based off the 700 MHz spectrum when they get the contract for the iPhone in 2010.
• Your thoughts?

Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose

• The music industry as we know it is coming to an end, and faster than we once thought.
• One can blame two main causes for this; the internet, and music becoming almost completely digital.
• This, folks, I don’t feel is a bad thing.  I see a future where musicians utilize their digital content by giving it for free, as promotional means to get fans out to live shows.
• In fact, this is the only way I see it working.  There’s really no stopping the viral nature of the web, because no matter what, people crave information, and they want it for free.  Developers will keep coming up with more innovative/harder to track techniques for downloading and consumers will continue to download these programs and applications to facilitate their need for more, new content. It’s a circle that will never stop, and not to mention, downloading music is proven to be a greener practice, which gives it even more credibility in this day and age.
• NY Times’ Charles Blow reported back in the end of July:

A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.

• It’s quite obvious what’s happening.  Money should never have been the deciding factor on an artist’s credibility or success. Within technology, you can see the cultural backlash to this failing industry model.
• My Advice for artists is this; utilize the long tail of our current market and give your music away for free to develop an audience/following.  If your music is good, these people will pay you to play live shows.  That’s it, that’s music.  If you’re in it for any other reasons than that, you may want to reevaluate your intentions.

• If this isn’t a sure sign of another Gmail success story, Google Wave invites are going for sale on eBay for upwards of $25. The first auction for a Wave pass went for $157. Not a bad deal for the seller who just had to sign up early for the Beta (which I signed up the first day and have still yet to receive mine. What’s the deal Google?)

• On July 7th, Fred Lalonde, the founder of openplaces.org announced in a tweet that Apple had bought the company that produced the Maps API that his company used in their software [CW]. Pushpin is the name of the software API that Openplaces uses and it is made by a company called Placebase. How did everyone find out? Simply a Tweet from the former founder which said “Apple bought PlaceBase – all hush hush.  Pushpin site taken offline.  Hyperlocal iPhone?”
• How do we know it’s true. For starters, the former CTO of Placebase is now an engineer at Apple as well and the site has been pulled offline. Here is what Om said about the company last year:

Waldman thought differently. He decided to compete with Google and other free mapping services by doing two things: One, by offering customizations and tons of features that integrated private and public data sets in many diverse ways. (He knew it would be a while before Google would get around to offering customization). His other twist was to offer a way to layer commercial and other data sets (such as demographics and crime data) onto the maps using an easy-to-use application programming interface (API). The product is called PushPin.

• Here’s a video of Placebase CEO Jaron Waldman demoing his product at an O’Reilly conference last year. A good example of the software in use is http://policymap.org.  Like Openplaces, Policy Map uses the Pushpin API that Apple purchased as the underlying technology in its mapping product.

• Popular car sharing service, ZipCar, just made it that much easier for you techies out there with their new official iPhone app.
• You can find, reserve, and even control your ZipCar through the app.  Users are able to unlock and lock their car, and even beep the horn if you forget where/what car you were driving.
• The app’s free and is currently in the Appstore.  Go cop that ish!

• Electric Scooter manufacturer, Vectrix, is officially bankrupt.  They’ve just recently filed for Chapter 11 protection.
• The company plans to stay in business and will auction their assets of right over $5 million on or around Oct. 29th this year.

• Portland Oregon based Iberdrola Renewables has a lot to be happy about right now.
• They’ve applied for eight grants going towards renewable energy projects with a total of 980MW and $1.8 billion in investment.  They’ve received grants on all eight applications!
• Just last week, they received three grants from the US Treasury Department in total of right around $251 million.
• To date, they’ve received a total of almost $550 million in stimulus grants.
• Iberdrola currently has wind farms under construction in Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Illinois, and North Dakota.
• To put it into perspective for you guys, construction of 980MW worth of wind projects will support in between 11,800 and 14,000 jobs in one year.  That’s great!  Keep up the good work Iberdorla, companies like yours are driving us into a cleaner future.