Tesla Motors has long attracted media attention for being the only company that is building a zero emission sports car. The latest news is that the first batch of Tesla Model S Sedans, scheduled to be delivered in 2012, have sold out. The company that has long been infamous for attracting a lot of investment for Research and Development (R&D) despite annual losses that stretch back several years, claims that it should begin to make a profit in 2013. How much did the company spend on R&D for the Model S?

According to this 2010 report, Tesla would break-even if it sold 20,000 cars at a price of $57,000 each. Rough, back of the envelope calculations thus suggest that Tesla spent over $1.5 billion to develop the vehicle. To put things in perspective, according to the IMF, there are 23 countries that have an annual GDP lower than that.

Amid the turmoil surrounding congressional negotiations over the debt ceiling, what has received less attention is that the United States created 117,000 jobs between June and July. Which industries were those jobs created in? Read the rest of this entry →

According to InTrade, a prediction market, there’s a 14.9% chance that the US debt ceiling will be raised before the end of July. To put things in perspective, people think there’s a greater chance that scientists will figure out nuclear fusion. A potentially limitless source of energy.

70% of teens believe businesses try to trick them into spending more money. 60% think credit card companies encourage people to take more debt than they can handle. Only 25% disagreed with the statement “The stock market is rigged mostly to benefit greedy Wall Street bankers.” Read more over here.

Source: LifeInc

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis touches down at 6am EST on the 21^st of July, it will mark the end of an era for NASA. Perhaps NASA’s greatest victory is its success at having touched the hopes and dreams of entire generations through five decades of human space exploration. Nowhere has this been clearer than in the movies that filmmakers have produced celebrating space as the pinnacle of human achievement. To commemorate the end of an age for NASA, Centives decided to look at the relationship between the space agency and the movie industry that has been influenced by it the most.

NASA Considers Reality TV Read the rest of this entry →

To commemorate the end of the 2011 FIFA World Cup, Centives took a look at some interesting historical trends of the tournament. Read the rest of this entry →