Tesla files for first US auto IPO since Ford

US electric car firm Tesla Motors has taken another major step towards the mainstream, announcing plans for an $100m IPO which would make it the first US car firm to go public since Ford in 1956.

As widely anticipated, the California-based company filed documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late on Friday, which confirmed it was looking to raise $100m at an IPO, but failed to provide details on the proposed timing and pricing of the flotation.

The proposed IPO is already being positioned as a major test of the health of the emerging electric car market and a raft of competitors, including Fisker Automotive, Think and even GM's Chevy Volt project, will be hoping that Tesla has few problems attracting investors.

The company, which produces the high-profile Roadster electric car and last year secured a $465m loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy, said that it will use the money raised through the IPO to finance plans for a new power train factory in Palo Alto and an assembly plant for its proposed Model S electric sedan in southern California.

The SEC documents provided fresh details about the Model S, which the company said it expects to launch in late 2011 with a price tag of $57,400, falling to $49,900 when federal tax credits are taken into account.

It also revealed that it has 2,000 reservations for the car already recorded with customers having paid a refundable deposit of $5,000 to get on the waiting list, and that it expects to scale up to produce 20,000 cars a year in pretty short order.

It added that it expects the car to boast a range of between 160 and 300 miles on a single charge and, intriguingly, it plans to design a battery pack for the vehicle "with the capability of being rapidly swapped out at specialised commercial battery pack exchange facilities" – a move that could make the car compatible with the high-profile Project Better Place initiative to develop battery swap stations.

The company also signaled that while it may produce commercial vans, SUVs and other types of cars in the future, it is planning to throw everything behind the development of the Model S in the short term, revealing in the SEC filing that "we do not plan to sell our current generation Tesla Roadster after 2011 due to planned tooling changes at a supplier for the Tesla Roadster, and we do not currently plan to begin selling our next-generation Tesla Roadster until at least one year after the launch of the Model S, which is not expected to be in production until 2012".

Tesla confirmed it has recorded substantial losses to date, posting an accumulated loss of $236.4m against sales of $108.2m since the company's launch.

However, the prospects for the IPO remain good with a number of recent clean tech firms having pulled off impressive public debuts in recent months, despite being loss-making. Moreover, Tesla's losses are narrowing fast, the company reporting that losses fell from $82.8m in 2008 to $31.5m a year later.

The company has also invested heavily in the past year in opening showrooms around the world and has secured a raft of high-profile investor backers who are confident it will become the first pure-play electric car firm to challenge the global auto giants.

The announcement came in the same week as US secretary of energy Steven Chu announced that the Department of Energy has closed its $1.4bn loan agreement with Nissan North America, Inc. to retool one of its Tennessee factories into a facility for manufacturing advanced electric automobiles and battery technologies.

Nissan plans to use the funds to build its Leaf electric car at its existing plant in Smyrna, Tennessee and open a new plant for building up to 200,000 battery packs a year.