I found it kind of bizarre that Tesla Motors has filed for an IPO and is looking to raise $100 million from public investors. This comes about four months after the company landed a $465 million taxpayer loan to build factories to churn out really expensive money-losing cars that help rich people boost their egos and make them feel more "green." Let me get this straight: After borrowing half-a-billion dollars from you and I as taxpayers, they want to sell $100 million of stock to the public, of which half will be reserved to pay off the money they borrowed from the taxpayers? Okay. The fact is the company has been bleeding money for years and says it doesn't have any designs on being profitable until 2012, according to the filing. Huh? I thought that the "new IPO market" was supposed to be for profitable companies, not for extremely high-risk speculative car companies that have no track record of making money. Remember, after the tech bubble we were supposed to dial back on venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, investment bankers, and other snake-oil salesman from robbing granny's retirement funds for speculative IPOs. What, is it 1999 again? But sometimes it comes down to marketing. Tesla has a good story for 2010: GM has crashed, green is all the rage, and we need to think about "innovation," right? After all, these are neato fast cars that run on electricity, coming from the heart of Silicon Valley. It's a new car startup! Pride of the American entrepreneur, and all that. Not so fast, there are more holes in this story than there are scented candle at your local new-age store. The most glaring problem with Tesla is the company loses a ton of money and has always lost a ton of money. It has an accumulated a deficit of $236.4 million. The copmany reported sales for the first three quarters of 2009 of $93.4 million. Over that period, the net loss was $31.5 million, an improvement from the $57.3 million loss it had over the same period in 2008. Basically, it still loses money on every car it sells. I know, I know, it's a startup. But is it really? Tesla was founded in 1994! Perhaps Tesla is nothing more than an ego-boosting operation for Silicon Valley mavens or celebrities. Take the concept of the ecorazzi! It's all part of the trend of the self-satisfying green-guilt relief, which we know is not very scientific and is often hypocritical. The company payed $175,000 for the CEO's jet. I should have added frivolous jet payments to my crappy company indicator list. More reasons not to touch this IPO: The cars have had lots of problems. Do you really like the idea of a car requiring a battery pack with 7,000 battery cells?  But the worst thing I don't like about the concept of Tesla is that you have to wait hours for it to charge up. Tesla says with it's High-Power Connector you can charge fully to a full 200-mile+ range in 3.5 hours. But he experience from the New Yorker writer (see below) was that he only got 9 miles of charge in two hours! Charging: A big problem with high-performance electric cars like Tesla. Remember all those times you were about to run to work and you realized you forgot to charge your cell phone? Now think of that morning when you forget to charge your car. But you should make up your own mind. If you really want to do some more research, and learn a lot about Musk and the company, I believe the must-read piece is this New Yorker profile (subscription required, but it's free if you get the New Yorker). After re-reading the piece, I found it "fair and balanced." It should give you the pros and cons of Tesla, as well as a pretty detailed impression of Musk. The bottom line is that I agree with another electric-car entrepreneur and critic of Tesla, Shai Agassi, who says the road to riches in the car industry lies in mass-production and the critical mass of a charging systems infrastructure. Now, I think Agassi's plans to build an international charging infrastructure are also pretty crazy. But that's what entrepreneurs are for -- being crazy-- and we love them for it. I believe one of the greatest risks of the idea of high-end boutique electric car company like Tesla is that it could end up being a novelty item from the "green-guilt" era. After all, we are by all measures early in the Electric Vehicle (EV) revolution, and Teslan could be left as an automobile island when larger, greater-scale standardized electric car systems come to market. Is Musk the the DeLorean of electric cars? Yes, my biggest concern about Tesla is not Elon Musk, the battery packs, the jet bills, and the government loan. My biggest worry is that Elon Musk was just way too early in the EV game.