Will Tesla Succeed Like Apple, Or Vanish Like Altair?

[AnOutsider]

Will Tesla Succeed Like Apple, Or Vanish Like Altair?

For every Apple, in other words, there are hundreds of companies that have vanished from the computer business, from Altair, Altos, Amdahl, and Apollo to Wang, Xerox, and Zeos.

Every venture capitalist knows this, and the most successful VCs hope to have a home run and a base hit out of every 10 companies they fund. The rest? Collateral damage.

Debating whether Tesla Motors (and its charismatic CEO Elon Musk) will be an Apple or an Altair is part of the excitement around the nascent electric car business.

References another article we've been discussing (and puzzling over the title of):

Now Fortune senior editor-at-large Alex Taylor III has weighed in. You might deduce that he's a skeptic about Tesla's chances by the title of his article: "Tesla's business plan: Riding on fumes."

*edit* also mentions that they'll be reporting from the event:

Starting tomorrow night, the company will spend four days showing off the latest version of its 2012 Tesla Model S all-electric sports sedan as it moves closer to launch. GreenCarReports will be there, reporting on the events as they happen.

The wording suggests that if they ARE there tomorrow (Friday 9/30), they'll be posting what they learn and not holding off as some suspected might be the case.