Tesla's CEO Ze'ev Drori announced today that Tesla has met their goal of starting regular production of the Tesla Roadster today. This is big news. I've been watching Tesla for going on two years now and anxiously awaiting the day when their cars become available for sale (not that I plan on buying the $90,000 roadster anytime soon...). I really hope that demand will be high enough for them to keep on track to release their sedan in the near future (which I just might buy). As far as I know they're still planning on finally unveiling it in the first half of this year, which means we should get to see it very soon. I wonder what I have to do to get invited to that party.

In other electric car news, ZAP, in partnership with the Chinese Youngman Automotive Group, is planning to release a limited number of cars based on the 100 year old Detroit Electric. An electric car that was in production from 1907 to 1939, back before the internal combustion engine was king and cars were electric as often as not. If they keep the original price point of about $2000, I'll have to pick up one of those too.

I would be now...

At a recent appearance before the California Air Resources Board (CARB—familiar, I'm sure, to anyone who's seen Who Killed the Electric Car), Tesla Motors CEO Martin Eberhard delivered a deliciously sarcastic three minute statement about California's Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate, fuel cells, and electric cars. A quick excerpt:

However, we are actually delighted by the way this bias [towards hydrogen fuel cell vehicles] finds implementation in the ZEV mandate. For the results of this mandate is that all of our potential EV competitors – all the big car companies – remain mired in non-productive, deeply-expensive fuel cell programs, keeping them out of the EV marketplace, and indeed out of the serious ZEV marketplace entirely.

The full text is available on the Tesla Motors blog. Politics, in my opinion, is in dire need of more sarcasm.