Filed under: Raising money, Venture capital industry, Private equity industry, Public or private?

If you’ve been following the substitute energy saga alongside ridiculous oil prices going from rising to high to astronomical, you’ve run across the name Tesla Motors. Tesla is a venture capital and privately funded auto maker that produces a high performance electric powered sports car.

The Tesla Roadster and soon to be sedan are now both now going to be manufactured in California, or so a report in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere are noting. Governor Schwarzenegger included some incentives that have kept the electric auto maker from moving manufacturing to New Mexico (besides the Governator ordering one unit for himself). But it appears that the State of California is giving it more than mere tax incentives.

It appears that this is going to get equipment leases from the state, as well as additional allows. What is interesting here is that this gets the company even further on the map. There have been current reports that Tesla was in the market for another huge financing. Whether or not that comes about now isn’t certain. Other reports show that the company may even supply battery units to Daimler or other vehicle manufacturers.

What’s becoming fairly certain is that Wall Street expects to see Tesla file for an initial public offering. As capital intensive as these businesses are, the company needs to have a steady automobile (no pun intended) to be able to raise the capital it needs.

Think of the good news…. At least one US auto manufacturer will be considered cool.

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Filed under: Cards, Debt, Recession

As lenders realize that they spent the last few years throwing cash at anyone with a pulse and an IQ over 20, they’re slicing back credit limits for a lot of people, even those who have never been delinquent.

Here’s where it gets really bad: one component of your FICO score is the amount of credit you currently have drawn down divided by the amount you’ve available. Lowering your limits decreases the denominator and can swiftly send your credit score plunging — although you didn’t miss a payment, open a new account, buy a Ferrari, or do anything else to draw the ire of the credit gods.

So millions of people have seen their credit card stories go something like this: use credit card, make regular payments to build strong FICO score, see your credit limit slashed because of broader macroeconomic conditions, be required to pay a higher interest rate because of changes in your credit score caused by something the bank, not you, did. Oh, and you’ll also have to pay a higher interest rate if you borrow money from someone else to buy a house, which cost you thousands of dollars over the years.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work out: lend someone money, reduce the limit, and then lend them more money at a higher interest rate. It’s brilliant!

I would be nice to see the Fair Isaac take some action to prevent these credit limit cuts from increasing the cost of credit for people who have behaved responsibly. Somehow I doubt that’ll happen.

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Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Macintosh, Freeware, Social Software, web 2.0

Cocoalicious is a really slick — but, unfortunately, Mac-only — dedicated browser for your Del.icio.us bookmarks. If you’re a bookmarking junkie, and you’ve way more sites saved to Del.icio.us than you could ever hope to keep track of, this could be an best solution for you. It’s laid out a bit like Apple Mail, with your tags running down the left side, your bookmarks on top, and a browser pane at the bottom.

You can put bookmarks directly into Cocoalicious — it syncs with your Del.icio.us account — or use the bookmarklet to add stuff to Cocoalicious straight from your browser. This way you can take advantage of autocompletion, tagging by dragging, and other features that make Del.icio.us easier. Cocoalicious also supports Spotlight, so you can search for your bookmarks straight from the Finder!

[via Lifehacker]

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