Tesla IPO Roars Out of the Gate

The Dow may have plunged yesterday, but over on the Nasdaq, things were great for new kid Tesla Motors. In its first day of trading, Tesla's price shot up almost 41% from its $17 offer price, closing at $23.89, after at one point hitting $25, MarketWatch reports. The company's broke founder, Elon Musk, sold 1.4 million shares in the process, pulling in more than $15 million.

Evidently, the private sector is excited about electric cars, the Washington Post observes, offering a small, indirect validation for Congress' efforts to subsidize the vehicles.“We had an incredibly positive outcome from the smartest investors in the world,” Musk boasted. But some investors are skeptical. “The cars are cool,” writes one Motley Fool blogger, “but the company is a train wreck.” The company has sold fewer than 1,500 vehicles, has never turned a profit, and won't have a product to sell until 2012. (More Tesla stories.)