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Regulators: Fund firm hid losses
Evergreen accused of tipping off some so they could cash out

By Todd Wallack, Globe Staff | June 9, 2009

Evergreen Mutual Funds

Federal and state regulators yesterday accused Boston-based Evergreen Investment Management Co. of overstating the value of one of its mutual funds for a 17-month period, and then secretly tipping off select clients about steep losses in the fund before disclosing them to other investors.

Evergreen agreed to pay $40 million to investors who lost money in the fund as part of its settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and to hire an independent compliance consultant, who will review its procedures. It is also paying a $1 million fine to Massachusetts securities officials.

The allegations center on the Ultra Short Opportunities Fund, which Evergreen marketed as a conservative investment that provided shareholders with steady income at low risk. Instead, fund managers bought riskier mortgage-backed securities, some of which plunged in value in 2007, according to the complaints.

From February 2007 to June 2008, regulators said, members of the team that managed the Ultra Short fund failed to tell the valuation committee at Evergreen about price changes and other negative news that would affect the value of the fund’s holdings, or used pricing information that turned out to be unreliable. This had the effect of inflating Ultra Short’s value by as much as 17 percent. That meant investors who sold during this period got higher prices than they should have, while those who bought paid more than they should have.

Moreover, the inflated value made Ultra Short appear to be one of the best funds in its class, the SEC said, when it should have been ranked near the bottom of its category.

Securities lawyer Jahan K. Manasseh, who represents a client who lost money in the fund, predicted more legal cases against other investment companies that had supposedly safe, conservative bond funds, but lost money by investing in risky securities.

“They were often mislabeled and referred to as bond funds,” Manasseh said.

The SEC did not name the Evergreen employees responsible for the alleged violations. Evergreen said the two managers of the Ultra Short fund at the time were Lisa Brown-Premo and Robert Rowe. Company spokeswoman Laura Fay said they no longer work at the firm. Neither could be reached for comment.

In June 2008, regulators said Evergreen quietly alerted some important clients and middlemen that the value of the fund’s mortgage-backed securities had significantly declined, giving those investors a chance to dump their shares.

“By picking and choosing to disclose negative information to some investors and not others, Evergreen gave certain shareholders an unfair advantage and left others in the dark,” David P. Bergers, director of the SEC’s Boston office, said in a statement.

Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin said Evergreen began telling key investors and financial advisers who sell its mutual funds about Ultra Short’s problems on June 12, 2008. That prompted some to yank money out the next day, before the price plunged further.

Evergreen shut the fund on June 18, with remaining investors getting $7.48 per share, 22 percent less than the shares were worth at the start of the year. Just a week earlier, before Evergreen tipped clients about the problems, the fund’s shares had traded above $9.

Galvin said the investigation continues.

Evergreen did not admit to or deny the regulators’ assertions.

“We are committed to acting in the best interest of shareholders, and continue to move forward with our primary goal of safeguarding your investments and providing the high quality investment service you expect and deserve,” it said in a statement yesterday.

Evergreen runs 76 mutual funds, with $164 billion under management as of March 31. It’s now owned by Wells Fargo & Co., which bought its previous parent, Wachovia Corp., for $15 billion in December.

Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@globe.com.

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(NECN: Scot Yount, Newton, Mass.) – The man who exposed the largest Ponzi scheme in history is making a rare appearance tonight.

In the financial world he is a kind of geeky hero. Yet Harry Markopolos shuns the worldwide fame he has garnered by blowing the whistle on Bernie Madoff and the largest Ponzi scheme in the world.

Markopolos spoke at the Center For Asset Management’s annual conference at Boston College.

Markopolos and his team began their inquiry into Madoff in 1999. Markopolos was asked to try to reverse engineer Madoff’s investments, so that their Boston based firm could duplicate his results.

Markopolos-loves numbers, and it was enormously simple he says to use formulas to figure out that Madoff’s investment scheme was fraudulent. But what Markopolos found difficult–was convincing the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate.

For nine years he kept up the quixotic fight-but the SEC wouldn’t take up the case. Now with Madoff having pleaded guilty-and thousands of investors bilked out of billions, the shy man who makes Whitman, Massachusetts his home says he still can’t sleep nights, even though he proved he wasn’t jousting at windmills.

He had done his best-even fearing for his life in the process, but it was not until the worst recession the county has seen in decades took hold–that Madoff was exposed.

Today Markopolos still shuns the cameras and fame. He testified before congress-but told legislators

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Boston moves ahead in world finance rank

The global recession has actually enhanced Boston’s reputation as one of the top financial centers in the world.

A new report ranks the Hub within the top 10 financial centers in the world, moving from 11th place to ninth place, as many other financial hotspots tumbled along with the global economy.

The “Global Financial Centres Index,” prepared for the City of London Corp., indicates that major investment players across the globe appreciate Boston’s steady environment for financial firms and experts at a time of deep market turmoil.

Previous rankings by other firms usually have Boston in top 20 lists of financial cities – thanks to the large number of mutual-fund, wealth-management, venture capital and private-equity firms based here.

But the City of London Corp.’s study, which was conducted by the UK-based Z/Yen Group, stands out because, in addition to data measuring the amount of funds flowing through a city, it relies on surveys of financial executives who are asked to rate cities.

Those interviewed are also dominated by European executives, confirming that Boston has an international, Old World flare appealing to those on the other side of the Atlantic.

Jim Lowell, editor of Fidelity Investor, an independent print and online newsletter, said Boston is considered a “hidden gem” by some international investors.

“Boston has long been known for being staid, fiduciary (minded) and for its long-term asset management,” said Lowell.

Those somewhat conservative traits have apparently helped Boston during tough financial times.

London and New York remain the unquestioned leaders of the financial world, the index report said.

If anything, London and New York’s leads may have solidified, despite London, in general, and New York, in particular, being epicenters of the current financial crisis. The two cities have maintained their lead partly because many up-and-coming, fast-growing cities in Asia and elsewhere took heavy hits during the current economic crisis, the City of London report said.

Boston was also a beneficiary of the recession, in terms of rankings.

The Hub rated particularly high for its financial “infrastructure” and “market access” to funds and deals, the report said.

How long Boston can maintain its strong, top-tier status is in question.

Cities throughout Asia and the Middle East – such as Shanghai, Beijing and Dubai – are emerging as financial powerhouses that want a larger piece of the funds and jobs flowing to more established financial centers, the report said.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1174535

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By Kendra Marr – The Washington Post

May 19, 2009

Lisa Poole/AP Photo

A Hummer is on display at the Herb Chambers GM dealership in Danvers, Mass. Chinese automakers are interested in buying up iconic brands such as Hummer in order to gain technological expertise in the automotive market.

America’s auto titans are dismantling their global empires. But across the Pacific, it’s as if the global economic forces that have pummeled Detroit never struck. Chinese auto sales are up, and this year China is projected to displace Japan as the world’s largest car producer.

Now, the auto world is buzzing that China’s auto industry may try to pick up the pieces of Detroit — at a bargain.

Chinese companies have tried to dampen speculation, issuing regulatory filings that deny bids to buy Ford’s Volvo or General Motor’s Saab. But there’s little doubt among analysts that Chinese automakers are interested in the United States and that Detroit’s automakers are interested in them.

Chinese Beat Chevy to Electric Car Market with the BYD - E6

Buying up iconic brands such as Hummer or Saturn could supply Chinese automakers with the technological expertise to help them leapfrog past long-established competitors, said Kelly Sims Gallagher, a lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, who wrote a book on Chinese automakers.

“That’s where Chinese firms are weakest,” she said. “They have world-class business and manufacturing capabilities now. What they still lack is technological know-how, systems integration, being able to design new vehicles from scratch and get them to a manufacturing line.”

China still suffers from its reputation of being a copycat manufacturer. An acquisition could lend clout to some of the nation’s 100 car companies that are largely unknown outside their home country.

Such a deal would be “off-the-shelf legitimacy that you can purchase,” said Aaron Bragman, an auto analyst with IHS Global Insight.

The global auto industry is restructuring. Italy’s Fiat is on the verge of taking control of Chrysler. Last year India’s Tata Motors, already famous for its $2,000 Nano, acquired Jaguar and Land Rover.

And China’s auto sector has emerged as a threat to the long-standing pecking order. This year, Geely Automobile, one of China’s largest private carmakers, purchased an Australian drivetrain transmission supplier, a leading gearbox manufacturer. Another Chinese company, BYD, which counts Warren Buffett as an investor, launched a mass-market plug-in electric car, ahead of GM’s anticipated Chevrolet Volt.

“When we look back 20 years from now, the year 2009 is likely to be viewed as the year in which the baton of leadership in the global auto industry passed from the United States to China,” Jack Perkowski, a Western transplant and former chairman of a Beijing auto parts company, wrote in his blog “Managing the Dragon.”

Originally published at: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2009/may/19/china-emerging-auto-epicenter/

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Herb Chambers Expands His Auto Empire As Industry Tanks

Herb Chambers at his corporate headquarters in Somerville, Mass. (Sarah Bush/WBUR)

SOMERVILLE, Mass. — He is everywhere. If you’re looking to buy a new car, it’s not hard to run into one of his ads — or a Herb Chambers dealership.

While many auto dealers are struggling in this economy — more than 70 have gone out business in Massachusetts in the last two years — Chambers is expanding. He owns 44 franchises, including 32 dealerships in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He’s building or renovating several more and, in the last year or so, Chambers has gone from the 14th top dealer in the nation to the 12th.

We recently visited Chambers at his corporate headquarters in Somerville, Mass., to talk about his business in this recession.

Chambers’ business is characterized as an “empire,” but he’s modest about that label. “It’s flattering, but I don’t view myself as having an empire.”

“I’m a guy that grew up in Dorchester and went to English High School, and I go to work every single day. We’re not really trying to build an empire.

“And we really had no intention of winding up being the twelfth largest retailer of cars in the country. It’s always been, ‘Just do a great job for today and try and build a future for our company.’ And as a result of that, we wind up where we are today.”

Not bad for a guy who started in the office machine business, sold it, made a fortune and purchased his first car dealership — which was failing at the time — in New London, Conn., 25 years ago.

Now, Chambers sells everything from the least expensive of Chevys at a dealership in Danvers to the most expensive Bentley in Boston. Bentley is his favorite personal automobile, by the way, of the dozen or so cars he owns.

There’s plenty of buzz among Massachusetts auto dealers who are struggling while he’s expanding. “I spoke to somebody about it yesterday,” Chambers says, “and they said, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘We’re not building these dealerships for today.’ If we were building them for today, we would never build them.

“I have a vision that this business is going to bounce back and we are going to have the facilities in place and the people in place to grow even further and faster.”

Down, but definitely not out

Statistics from 2007 show that at the wholesale level, Chambers’ Massachussetts and Rhode Island sales totaled about 64,000 vehicles. In 2008, however, that number dipped.

“I’m going to say that we wound up being down someplace in the vicinity of around six or seven percent,” Chamber says. “In the first quarter of this year, comparing it to the first quarter of last, we will be down at about 22 percent.”

Despite the down economy, Chambers says those figures are still unacceptable.

“Totally unacceptable. I want to be growing the business, I don’t want to be going down 20 percent. But you can find comfort in that you’re the survivor, you’re doing much better than those around you. But it certainly doesn’t please me.”

On the struggling automakers

While many other dealers are very much focused on the present — at possible bankruptcy filings for General Motors and Chrysler, and at President Obama’s June 1 deadline for the big automakers to overhaul their business plans — Chambers is looking down the road, predicting attrition among the dealers, meaning there will be fewer of them out there.

“It’s a negative, but for our company we view it as a positive because there are many vehicles on the road that require parts and service and those vehicles will wind up coming to us and we’ll service more cars than we’re currently doing,” Chambers says. “And, when the times are tough, we do have brands that other domestic dealers do not have. Three Mercedes dealerships, four Honda, two BMW, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Range Rover — we’ve got all of these things and these are very profitable dealerships.

“Those can carry us through the storm while — people who are focused primarily in domestic dealerships — it’s very, very difficult for them and I don’t know whether they’ll be able to get through it or not. President Obama says bankruptcy may not be the worst thing for two of the giants, Chrysler and GM, and that they might emerge on the other side as leaner with less costly labor and more hungry for new business. Chambers agrees bankruptcy might be what the automakers.

“I hate to hear of any company going bankrupt, however, if they could become more competitive in their cost of building an automobile through labor, that would be a good thing.

“I want to see these companies do great. The products that the American car companies are building today are terrific. They’re terrific.”

The Chambers method

So, what’s made Chambers successful? He’s simply big enough to ride out the turmoil at present and over the years he’s become single-minded about catering to his customers.

The Chambers method: Greeters in the parking lot, greeters at the door and apples for anyone who walks in. Chambers is particularly enthusiastic about the apple idea. “We have apples that we give to every dealership that we have, so that when people come in to pick up their car, there’s an apple there and they can have a snack and all of a sudden you start to feel better.

“It doesn’t reduce the price of the bill, but it does make you start to feel better about it.”

But what’s most interesting is that Chambers addresses customer concerns head on, and puts negative experiences out there for all to see. On his customer-driven Web site, HerbCares.com, customers blog — whatever they want, there are positive comments and others that some dealers might prefer to stay hidden. Here is an excerpt from a customer who lives in Sharon:

My husband and I purchased a 2009 Lexus and signed up for the tire warranty for $495. Subsequently, I changed my mind and called the finance person. He told me I would have the refund back within seven to 10 days. Since then, I have made three phone calls and my husband even visited the dealership. No one has gotten back to us and there has been no check in the mail.

Chambers turns this, and all the other negative comments on the Web site, into positives by forcing his managers to answer every one and solve every problem. That customer followed up with another blog entry, cooing about her treatment.

“How we handle that customer will determine whether they ever come back to see us again,” Chambers says. “What do they say on the golf course? What do they say at work? What do they say to their family at a party? I want to create these memorable experiences.”

Expanding the empire

At his headquarters in Somerville, which is also a Mercedes dealership, Chambers leans against a car in the middle of the showroom floor for a photo. His hands are planted squarely on the hood of a convertible only inches away from a sign that requests hands off — after all, the price tag is $520,860.

And then, minutes later, he’s talking about how he’s constantly urging his staff to keep the dealership windows clean because customers shouldn’t see fingerprints when they walk in the door.

Even though he’s been at it for more than two decades since buying that first lot in New London, he’s far from through. The empire will expand even in this economic downturn. “If there are dealers out there who are saying, ‘My god, he wants to own everything in the greater Boston area, in Massachusetts,’ what would you say to that?”

“They’re probably right. I do. If only if we can grow it at a sensible pace where we take good care of our customers. And we want to continue to do more dealerships, we’ve got a few more dealerships that we’ve got in the queue to buy, and we want to keep expanding.”

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The New England Xpo for Business will make its debut on May 19th 2009!

New England Xpo for Business 2009

For more information CLICK: New England Xpo for Business 2009

The show will be held in Boston at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

Dozens of educational sessions alongside over 300 exhibits cover business to business solutions in extensive categories for our attendees. The largest business networking party in state history will close the show and keep traffic on the show floor all day!

Event Management Exhibitor List (as of February 2009)

Marc Sherer President Event Management

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Two Live Tapings of NECN’s Must-See Business Show, CEO CORNER CLICK HERE!

CEO Corner with Herb Chambers & Charlie Baker - CLICK HERE

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Globe’s a tough sell
Newspaper hawked to hometown corporate elite

Photo by Staff graphic

Several Hub business leaders have been approached about buying the Boston Globe, but so far there have been no takers, the Herald has learned.

Car magnate Herb Chambers – the subject of a big interview in the Globe over the weekend – said he was asked a week or two ago if he wanted to buy the money-losing broadsheet, but he declined.

“Somebody asked me if I would have an interest if it were for sale, but I said no,” said Chambers. “If we were still big advertisers in the Globe, maybe it would make sense, but it would be an expensive proposition. I really don’t have any interest.”

The New York Times [NYT] Co. expects the Globe to lose $85 million this year after finishing last year $50 million in the red. The Times Co. is demanding $20 million in concessions from the Globe unions by Friday.

Suffolk Construction honcho John Fish said the Globe’s fate has been the talk of the city’s corporate set. “There have been conversations in the city about whether someone would step in and buy it,” he said.

Fish echoed countless others when he expressed hope that a new owner would be someone local who values the paper more than its out-of-town parent company.

“I would hope that somebody locally would acquire it,” said Fish.

But, like nearly everyone else, when asked if he would step forward to buy the Globe, regardless of price, Fish declined.

“No,” he said. “It’s not my line of business.”

In fact, Fish said he didn’t know anyone who was interested in saving the paper. This is even after Beth Israel Deaconess boss Paul Levy’s blog rally, Boston Foundation head Paul Grogan’s focus group and public relations firm O’Neill and Associates’ “Save the Globe” rally on behalf of the Boston Newspaper Guild.

New England Patriots [team stats] owner Robert Kraft, another name that comes up when discussing possible Globe saviors, declined to comment on the paper’s fate, but a source said the Kraft family “kicked the tires and ran away.”

The Times Co. bought the Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993. A couple of years ago, former GE CEO Jack Welch and others looked at buying the Globe, valuing it at around $600 million.

Sources have said the price tag for the Globe that has been bandied about – ranging from $130 million to “what’s your best offer” – is still too much, given how far the paper’s costs and revenues are out of whack. Plus, no one wants to wrestle with the unions.

“The negotiations are so volatile right now that I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on,” said Fish.

Yesterday’s news that the Globe’s circulation continues to fall didn’t help to loosen any wallets. The paper’s average daily circulation in the six months ending March 31 dropped 13.6 percent to 302,638 copies and its Sunday circulation sank 11.2 percent to 466,655. (The Herald’s circulation dropped by 17.3 percent to 150,688 daily and 9.7 percent to 95,392 Sunday, while visits to bostonherald.com jumped 14 percent.)

But at least some investors see value in newspapers.

Last month, Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Platinum Equity signed an agreement to purchase the San Diego Union-Tribune for an undisclosed sum.

Spokesman Mark Barnhill, who cautioned that the deal is not yet final, said, “In general, as we look at the newspaper industry, we think there are businesses in this industry that would present opportunities.”

When looking at possible investment opportunities, he added, the firm looks “to see if we have the resources to stabilize the business, and we also look to see if we can get it for the right price.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/media/view.bg?articleid=1168545

Globe unions locked in tough talks
/business/media/view.bg?articleid=1168809

Union leaders mum on talks as dissension spreads at Boston Globe
/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1168802

Blame aplenty for Globe’s decline
/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1168799

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Tesla and Tata Race Into a Future They Could Dominate

By Matthew DeBord
Sunday, April 26, 2009

The big automakers are supposed to be in the business of telling us what we’ll all be driving for the next 50 years, but they’ve had their (greatly diminished) thunder stolen over the past few weeks by radically new visions of how we’ll be getting from A to B. A few weeks ago, Silicon Valley-based start-up Tesla Motors finally yanked the cover off its much-anticipated Model S, an all-electric sedan that will, after tax credits, sell for just under $50,000. Earlier, India’s Tata Motors, part of one of the largest manufacturing entities in the world, officially launched its Nano “People’s Car,” which will go for $2,000, making it the planet’s cheapest ride.

Tesla and Tata are the opposite poles of a mobile future that could look utterly unlike what we have today: Electric cars that burn no gas and produce no carbon emissions and “micro cars” that can run on different fuels (including battery power), achieve high mileage with low emissions, and are affordable to much of the world’s citizenry tooling around on bikes, mopeds and scooters. In between, no more Pontiacs, Buicks, Mercurys or Chryslers.

Green luxury on one side and semigreen basic transportation on the other. These extremes could wind up defining our collective mobility choices. But will either Tesla or Tata survive to be part of this bifurcated destiny?

Unfortunately, both companies are grappling with significant business issues. Tesla’s are more troubling. The nearly six-year-old firm is still playing catch-up on delivery of pre-orders for its debut 2008 model year, of its exotic $100,000-plus electric Roadster. According to the company, it has put 300 customers, out of 600 who pre-ordered an ’08, behind the wheel of this very fast, very sexy car.

Last year, before securing a round of investment, the company was running out of operating cash. However, $350 million in loans from the Department of Energy was (and still is) out there, like low-hanging fruit, reserved for alternative-energy projects. Tesla has latched on to these funds as a sort of virtuous bailout. (It’s worth noting that the Detroit Big Three, pre-TARP, were also eyeing Energy loans to retool their plants for more fuel-efficient vehicles.)

Skepticism about the Model S has always run high. It remains elevated, although the gorgeous vehicle that chief executive Elon Musk unveiled last month did wow the media. At the moment, it’s a prototype plus pictures. If Tesla fails to get the Energy money, Model S production, slated to begin in 2011, is uncertain. Yet Tesla must move forward with the Model S, even as it tries to pursue profitability through Roadster orders and a deal with Daimler to supply power trains for an electric version of the Smart car. The company needs to demonstrate viability — an important concept these days in the car business — to stay in the running for the loans. And to Tesla’s credit, even though it’s endured some setbacks, the company has managed to thwart the naysayers.

Tata has its own problems. Last year, the firm — which made $126 million in 2007 but lost $52 million in 2008 — bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford. But as the global automobile industry has tanked during the financial crisis, Tata hit a wall on $2 billion in loans it took out to obtain the British brands. As has been widely reported, the Nano can’t help the company out of its pinch because a Nano factory in Bengal ran into massive local resistance. A new plant won’t be able to start building Nanos until next year, so Tata will have to piece together the first generation of the car using other manufacturing facilities.

Ultimately, Tesla is selling a more technologically revolutionary vision of the automobile and is under greater pressure to succeed. The company has been criticized by automotive prognosticators (myself included) who think the firm has been taking in deposits to fund expansion while stalling on deliveries and teasing the public with vaporware. Without the Energy Department loans, it may well be game over for the company unless Musk can persuade additional investors to pony up.

Tata has engaged in its own brand of spin with the Nano. Initial production may be far more limited than predicted, but that hasn’t stopped chief executive Ratan Tata from presenting a European Nano at the Geneva Auto Show and later promising an American Nano. Both the Nano Europa and Nano Americano would require a lot of additional safety and emissions equipment, but even if they cost twice as much as the Indian Nano, they’d still be priced at half of the cheapest North American car that still has four wheels and a roof.

So a betting man would say that the Nano is inevitable and the Model S, given how much it costs to develop a new vehicle (the Toyota Prius cost $1 billion), is in deep, deep trouble — as is Tesla. But what’s potentially happening is a new kind of market segmentation as sustainable destiny. Tesla’s goal is to build three vehicles: the Roadster, the Model S and a crossover-type family vehicle that could bring electric-vehicle ownership to the masses. Objectively, the company already has a competitive advantage over the big automakers; GM’s Chevy Volt, which isn’t actually a pure electric vehicle, won’t arrive until 2010 and may be priced above the far more seductive Model S. Chrysler is entering Tesla’s ballpark with its ENVI program, but, given its gloomy financials, it may never get its electric products off the assembly lines.

Electric vehicles will eventually become the iPhones of the developed world’s personal-mobility consumers; just as buyers did with the Prius, they’ll pay extra to do the right thing for Planet Earth. In regions where personal mobility doesn’t involve an enclosed experience, the Nano is a game-changer. And although it runs counter to the argument that we don’t need any more cars and horrifies some climate scientists, it’s the best option for the developing world.

If our coming era is going to be one of frugality and green investment, and if they can make it through the next two years, Tata and Tesla could come to dominate the transportation world.

Article Courtesy of Boston Overdrive - CLICK HERE

Tesla Model S marks phase two of ambitious electric plans

Article Courtesy of Boston Overdrive - CLICK HERE

(Tesla Motors)

Tesla took the cover off its curvaceous Model S sedan Thursday, the second phase of the Silicon Valley automaker’s lofty plan to sell electric cars for the masses.

If the $109,000 carbon fiber Roadster signified the new company’s cocksure stardom against Porsche and the Italians – after all, celebrities and rich enthusiasts are on minimum one-year waiting lists – consider the Model S a detente with Tesla’s exotic rivals.

The production version of the electric sedan, absent a $350 million loan from the Department of Energy and a manufacturing plant, will be tamer in performance but no less striking in its respective segment when it arrives in late 2011. Hours after embargoed studio photos of the concept car, above, were posted to a Flickr account, Tesla revealed the specifications at the official California launch: a 300-mile range, 45-minute charging, and zero to 60 miles per hour in 5.6 seconds.

Seven people can cram into the Model S – five adults and two children in a rear-facing seat under the hatch. The entire center console is one massive 17-inch touchscreen LCD, which wasn’t demonstrated at the launch. Tesla’s bold 300-mile claim, however, will only be met by its longest-range battery (two others will offer 160 and 230 miles). It’s likely the 160-mile battery will be standard, and the others will be very pricey options that will see the car soar past the $57,400 base price.

That puts the Model S in the range of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, BMW 5 Series, Jaguar XF, and other premium sedans. But Tesla buyers can now claim a $7,500 federal tax credit for electric and plug-in hybrid cars, which President Obama announced last week in addition to $2.4 billion in federal grants for electric car and battery manufacturers.

Tesla’s grand plan to produce an electric car under $30,000 is no secret, but little more than a dream that’s at least four years away, if that early. With the promised 100-mile-per-gallon Chevrolet Volt next year and Ford’s 2012 roll out of plug-in hybrids, Tesla will have to compete with a slew of moderately priced EVs (and the 2013 Toyota Prius, which surely will have no less than a big fat “80″ on its EPA window sticker).

According to CEO Elon Musk, Tesla is on its way to becoming profitable by mid-year after gathering $40 million in additional financing in December. That bodes well for the young automaker, but as old-timers General Motors and Chrysler can attest, a lot can go wrong in a short span of time. Hopefully nothing does until after April, when the Globe takes the Roadster for an exclusive, exhaustive three-day test in California. Check Boston Overdrive in the coming weeks for more details.

All photos copyright Tesla Motors.