Amid the growing interest in green technology and battery-powered vehicles, U.S. electric car maker Tesla Motors plans to go public soon. An IPO filing from the six year old start-up is expected any day, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes declined to comment on what he deemed “rumor or speculation.” The company’s chairman Elon Musk said early last year than an IPO was a possibility in either late 2008 or 2009.

If it goes public, Tesla would mark the first offering from a U.S. automaker since Henry Ford’s Ford Motor debuted its shares in 1956. The potential IPO symbolizes the resurgence of electric-car technology that most carmakers had dismissed as impractical until recently.

The financial turmoil in the latter half of 2008 virtually shut down the IPO market, but the demand has since picked up considerably. Tesla’s IPO would follow the successful debut of lithium ion battery maker A123 Systems, whose shares rallied 50 percent on their first day of trading on September 25th. Tesla will have to compete with a slew of established automakers that are racing to launch electric or plug-in vehicles.

A combination of factors, including the Obama administration’s push to have one million rechargeable vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015 and low-cost department of Energy loans, has driven the recent interest in developing electric vehicles.

The automaker said in September that it has delivered over 700 Roadsters since February 2008. The Roadster, which is built on a Lotus frame, can do 0 to 60 in less than four seconds and is faster than a Porsche 911 or Ferrari Spider. Tesla is also currently in the process of developing a lower cost model known as the Model S, which will have a base price of just under $50,000.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Clean Energy