photo: Coda Automotive
A new electric car company, Coda Automotive, emerged from stealth mode this week and unveiled a $45,000 sedan that it says will hit the streets in 2010.
The Santa Monica, Calif., startup is an offshoot of Miles Electric Vehicles, a maker of low-speed neighborhood runabouts. The CEO is Kevin Czinger, a veteran of Goldman Sachs (GS), Fortress Investment Group and dot-com era online grocer WebVan. Goldman Sachs’ Mac Heller serves as co-chairman and the board includes John Bryson, past chairman and chief executive of Edison International (EIX). Coda has raised $40 million from the Angeleno Group and other investors.
Green Wombat took a spin in the car, called the Coda, earlier this week in Southern California. As I wrote in my Green State column on Grist:
Open one of those minimalist black boxes that contain a shiny new iPod and you’re greeted by five words—“Designed by Apple in California.” In much smaller print would be the phrase “Made in China.”
That, in a nutshell, describes the strategy of the latest entrant in the electric car sweepstakes: Santa Monica-based Coda Automotive. At a defunct Wilshire Boulevard Jaguar dealership on Wednesday, the startup emerged from stealth mode and CEO Kevin Czinger literally pulled the cover off the Coda, a $45,000 battery-powered sedan set to go on sale next year in California. Coda is an offshoot of Miles Electric Vehicles, a maker of low-speed “neighborhood electric” runabouts.
The Coda sedan, which resembles a previous-generation Honda Civic, is a highway-ready, 80 mph five-seater that will travel 90 to 120 miles on a charge, according to the company.
And it is likely to be the first Chinese-made car to hit American roads. The car’s 333-volt lithium ion battery pack comes from the Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Co., a huge state-owned corporation that supplies batteries to Apple and other consumer electronics companies. Coda has established a joint venture with Tianjin Lishen to design and sell batteries for transportation and utility storage. The sedan’s design, brand and intellectual property will be owned by Coda, but it will be manufactured and assembled in China by Hafei, a state-owned automobile and aircraft manufacturer.
Read the rest of the column here.
Green Wombat 
who is going buy an electric car for $45,000 lol
We need not to be importing cars from China, Korea or Japan with out quota’s. My answer to Bob Corker’s comments on the idling of the Saturn plant in Spring Hill TN….
In response to Sen Bob Corkers regrets on the idling of the Spring Hill Saturn plant.
Well Mr. Corker what do you expect? We have no import quota’s, a government that is so corrupt that only does what it wants at the hands of big business and lobbyist’s, citizens brainwashed by the Republican and Democratic Parties, the media and Americans not proud of their own products. Now I am not attacking you personally because this has been going on for years before you even got into office, but I don’t see you getting off your keister to do anything about it either.
Why does Japan only allow 2% (source ALLPAR) of its gross auto sales to be imported yet they can sell any amount of autos here. WHY Mr Corker? Why are their no or few quota’s on other imports? This corrupt Federal gov’t and big business has sold us off, ruined the country, taken our jobs all for the greed of $$$. I am sick and tired of going into every store and 90% of everything you pick up says made in China, India, etc and in most cases of sub-standard materials. Bob, why does a company like Fleetwood campers move out of the US to Mexico… the result is… I bought a new camper in 2006 for $4050 made in Somerset PA. This same camper in 2008 cost over $7000 now being made in Mexico by workers making probably 1/3 the US worker and now the American consumer has to eat the shipping cost while Fleetwood makes more profit. Isn’t something wrong here?
Mr. Corker and Mr. Alexander (he is our senator, silent as you hardly ever here of him), Congressman Phil Roe how many steel mills are still open in this country? War is coming and our factories are closing while Asian factories are going full blast. In the event of a national emergency HOW long do you think it will take to reopen these factories and retrain the people to run them? You Proud to be Americans, well that’s what you have across your Honda’s trunk, keep buying these foreign cars? WHY? can’t you support your own country? Every time you buy a foreign car you are sending approx 1/3 the total purchase overseas which supports the Asian country’s people not the USA. Remember Dodge, Ford and GM, Willy’s built the the trucks, tanks, plane and ship engines and other parts that won WWII and is the reason you don’t speak German or Japanese… Who is going to build the products we need to defend ourselves? Do you really think Toyota is going to build your tanks when war breaks out?
Many of you think these cars are made here but very few are. They are assembled here of parts made overseas. Personally I will only buy a car with the serial / vin number starting with a 1, 2 or 4 as these are mainly made in the USA or Canada, which by the way has been our manufacturing partner for close to a hundred years.. I believe that all foreign item’s be charged at least a 10% additional sales, import or un-employment tax and this could be done immediately as the Country Of Origin is in the upc bar code.
I saw a Toyota van running around Greeneville with a TN State tag on it. If this is what is happening to my tax dollars then I should have the right to refuse to pay my taxes as I don’t want to support Asia. I also believe that anyone that receives a government paycheck be required to purchase an Amercan vehicle. I have been buying American cars (mostly Dodge) for 45 years now and have over 2,000,000 miles of very few problems. I know of just as many people who have problems with foreign cars.
I gave 4 years of my prime life to this country back in the 60’s for our peace and freedom but feel I have been kicked in the keister by our federal government and big business. It hurts even more when our citizens can’t support the products that we make and then you wonder why you don’t have a job.
Let me close with you politicians will have to make a decision: Support the American people or corruption of Washington and its lobbyists…. funny…. but Admiral Yamamoto once said of America after the attack on Pearl Harbor “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant” ….. I think our people are waking up… and what our Federal Government is doing to us is far more devastating then what Japan did to us at Pearl.
With gasoline prices again on the rise ($2.81 a gallon this morning in my area), inflation is due to go up….who knows? This might look like a great deal by 2010…. It’s sad that it’s “made in China”….when will our government wake up?