All I want for Christmas is a brand-new $109,000 (£70,190) electric sports car. Specifically, I want one that can do 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, hit a top speed of 125 mph and run something like 250 miles between battery charges.

It's called the Tesla Roadster — a battery-driven bullet of a car that just this week had Jeremy Clarkson shouting “God Almighty!” as he handily outpaced a Lotus Elise in one during a Top Gear drag-racing stunt.

The Roadster is Silicon Valley-designed and assembled (although the car bodies are made in the UK), and right now there are only two places in the world you can buy one: a showroom in LA and another down the road from me here in Menlo Park.

Not that my Christmas present — should anyone be so generous — would be delivered any time soon. The wait for a Roadster is currently 12 months.

In the meantime, my local Tesla salesfolk won't even let me test one. Such is the demand for the vehicle, you need to make a $5,000 pre-purchase reservation just to get on the list to try one.

Too bad I'm not pals with George Clooney, Matt Damon or San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who are among lucky first 100 customers to have taken delivery of the car.

Still, all's not been smooth sailing for the company many here are touting as the future of the US car industry. Mechanical issues,
last-minute design changes, acrimony between the co-founders and, most recently, lay-offs and money woes have collectively worn away some of its sheen. Plans for both a $60,000 sedan and a more affordable mass-market family car have been delayed.

With the Detroit-based US carmakers asking for $15 billion to help them to avoid bankruptcy, the people at Tesla are now wondering loudly why they shouldn't be helped as well.

SCHADENFREUDE is greeting the news of Facebook's recently cancelled employee stock sale. The idea had been to let workers sell some shares before the company's IPO. But suddenly it's not happening. That puts more pressure on the firm to find a way to actually make money.

A LITERAL spectre of 1930s Depression has started buzzing over us here most days: a genuine Zeppelin — very like the one that visits London in the summer. Tourist flights run at a pricey $495 an hour, but what will really hurt them is their ban on wireless devices. No live blogging while in flight? Where's the fun
in that?