Google founders back an electric sportscar

A secretive Californian company, Tesla Motors, is expected to unveil an all-electric sportscar next month that can reach 60mph (96km/h) in four seconds. The company, founded three years ago, has already attracted $40m of funding from backers including Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, as well as personalities involved in eBay and PayPal. Unusually for a start-up company in this cash-hungry sector, Tesla is not looking for further funding.

The company, which employs around 70 people, has teams in the UK and Taiwan, as well as the US. Malcolm Powell, a British engineer who spent 17 years as senior project engineer for Group Lotus and helped to put the North American version of the Lotus Elise into production, is overseeing Tesla`s manufacturing engineering.