The Big Three or the little many?

Via this Daily Kos diarist I am reminded of the Tesla car company, which I'd read about here and there before. Based in California, it's the manufacturer of electric vehicles that can go 300 miles or so on a single four-hour charge, and as fate would have it, it just unveiled its first two models, a sedan and roadster coupe, this week to oohs and aahs (according to this piece anyway).

I have to say the sedan is pretty gorgeous, and the coupe is a racy little strumpet all right. Right now, they sell for around $50,000. This may be partly a function of the fact that Tesla does all its work right here in the US of A, which surely means higher wages than it'd pay elsewhere (although from the sound of things the workers are nonunion).

Tesla plans a new sedan, project name White Star, which is explained a bit here. I don't know what it will cost. Presumably they'll try to bring it down a bit. At any rate, all this raises the interesting question of whether the American auto industry is going back to where it started - not three (or two) large companies, but many small ones. That may be good in many ways. And bad in others. It will certainly be bad for the UAW, for example. But maybe it's just the way things are bound to go.

Relatedly, for those of you who may not have the NYT on your daily radar screen, be sure to read this piece about how China is revved up to be the world leader in electric cars by 2012. Depressing.