Goodbye, Roadster, We Hardly Knew Ye

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We've been following the electric car company Tesla with great interest around GOOD, so it came as a bit of a surprise to hear that it would stop making the Roadster, the company's flagship car and the first highway-worthy plug-in you could buy in America.According to a statement from the company: "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."So is this a setback? It's unclear. Tesla was making money on the Roadster, but it wasn't much. It looks like this is probably an effort to hasten the move to models they can sell in higher volumes. They already have the $60,000 Model S in the works, and there are cheaper Teslas to come:

That model will spawn "at least two" offshoots, probably a crossover and a coupé, and lift Tesla volume to between 30,000 and 40,000 cars per year.The new Tesla ‘3-series', which Musk says will be the model that finally optimises the automotive technology his engineers have been developing for all future Teslas, will further lower the entry price to the Tesla range to around $30,000 and, with offshoot models, could push total volume towards 200,000 a year.

I like the sound of that plan, and I really hope it works. With $465 million in Department of Energy loans to build sustainable cars, it would be pretty discouraging if Tesla proved not to be sustainable itself. Start saving up for that Model S.