Quote :

"Three employees of electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc. died Wednesday when their small plane crashed in a residential neighborhood in California's Silicon Valley, causing a major power outage in the city of Palo Alto but injuring no one on the ground. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk wasn't on board the plane. In a statement released by the company, Mr. Musk confirmed the deaths and said Tesla is withholding the names of the three as they contact their families. "Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for us," Mr. Musk said. Tesla, which is based in the San Francisco suburb of San Carlos, has around 500 employees. The company said in a securities filing last month that it is planning an initial public offering. Menlo Park firemen look at the scene of a small plane that crashed into a house in East Palo Alto, Calif., on Wednesday. The twin-engine Cessna 310 that crashed in the residential neighborhood of East Palo Alto, about 30 miles southeast of San Francisco, is registered with a company that is owned by Tesla engineer Doug Bourn. Neither Tesla nor authorities would confirm whether Mr. Bourn was on the plane. The plane carrying the trio took off from an airport in Palo Alto just before 8 a.m., authorities said. The plane almost immediately hit a power tower, which clipped one of its wings, said Capt. John Chalmers of the East Palo Alto police department. The wing crashed into an unoccupied day-care facility, Mr. Chalmers said. He said the rest of the plane then slammed onto the street and skidded the length of a football field, hitting three cars before coming to a stop. No one on the ground was injured. "We're just very lucky that was the case here," Capt. Chalmers said. A spokesman for power utility PG&E said the plane clipped three power lines, which are generally about 80- to 100-feet high, which supply power to Palo Alto. He said power would likely be restored by late afternoon. A spokeswoman for the city of Palo Alto said virtually all of the city's 28,000 power systems customers are affected. Some traffic lights weren't functioning, she said, but all emergency services were in operation. Stanford University said on its Web site that its hospitals were operating on emergency power, while its central campus was unaffected by the outage."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703444804575071464183042100.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories

2/17/2010 8:10:26 PM

oops forgot to charge the plane

2/17/2010 10:00:51 PM

i was looking to get a job with them, but they only seem to hire engineers with MS and PhD's

RIP

2/17/2010 10:18:56 PM