As you may recall, Tesla sued Fisker Coachbuild back in April, charging that founder Henrik Fisker stole valuable company design ideas and trade secrets after it hired him to design the company’s oft-delayed plug-in electric-powered WhiteStar hybrid sedan.

Tesla claimed Fisker sabotaged the WhiteStar project by purposely drafting a subpar design that set it back three to six months, then stole proprietary Tesla technology and used it to build a competing car–the Fisker Karma. Unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show this past January, the $80,000 Karma had been scheduled to arrive at market in late 2009. Because of the production delays allegedly caused by Fisker’s designs, the WhiteStar won’t arrive until 2010.

“I think it’s ironic that Fisker chose to name his car the Karma, when what he’s done is very bad karma,” Tesla attorney Adam C. Belsky said back in April.

The arbitrator, it seems, didn’t quite agree. “The evidence is overwhelming that Fisker did nothing wrong,” he found. “The assertion of violations of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act by Fisker were baseless and neither brought nor pursued in good faith.”

A tough break for Tesla, which has been hit hard by the financial crisis, so hard that it was forced to borrow $40 million to cover its costs earlier this week.

I would say it’s great. According to one of the car magazines, either Car & Driver or AutoWeek, it’s apparently the best kind of mid-speed acceleration of any car they ever tested. So that’s perfect for when you’re driving on the highway and you want to make a lane change or something like that. It’s incredibly responsive, so it’s a very, very fun car to drive.”

–Tesla Motors chairman Elon Musk sings his creation’s praises.

Now that Tesla Motors has finally managed to roll its first zero-emission Roadster out of the garage, the company is looking at markets other than the luxury one for which the $98,000 car was intended. The company plans to build an electric four-door, five-passenger sports sedan that will sell for about half the price of the Roadster.

To do that, Tesla figures it needs another $250 million in the bank and so it’s mulling an IPO. Said Tesla’s chairman Elon Musk, “I would say within [the] end of this year or next year there is a good chance we would go public.”

(Crash test photo courtesy Tesla Motors)

Why? Tesla won’t quite say. “I’m sorry that it came to this and wish it were not so,” Tesla Chairman Elon Musk said in an email to the San Jose Mercury News. “It was not a question of personality differences, as the decision to have Martin transition to an advisory role was unanimous among the board. Tesla has operational problems that need to be solved, and if the board thought there was any way that Martin could be part of the solution, then he would still be an employee of the company.”

Eberhard, however, has a different take on the situation. “Yes, it is true–I am no longer with Tesla Motors–neither on its board of directors nor an employee of any sort,” he wrote in a post to the Tesla Motors Club blog. “I have also signed a nondisparagement agreement with Tesla, so I must, by contract, be a bit careful about how I word things. But I am also not going to lie about it. I am not at all happy with the way I was treated, and I do not think this was the very best way to handle a transition–not the best for Tesla Motors, not the best for Tesla’s customers (to whom I still feel a strong sense of responsibility), and not for Tesla’s investors.”