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The Coda Electric Car at the Detroit International Auto Show (Video)
Last week Timothy Lord looked at the Tesla Model S. He also took a quick look at the CODA electric car. Like Tesla, CODA is based in California. Like Tesla, CODA is building purely electric, "plug-in" cars. But unlike Tesla, CODA is making a bland but practical sedan that can go up to 150 miles on a charge and costs about $37,000. That's not exactly a Kia-competitive price, even though Tim says it looks kind of like a Kia. But it's 100% electric and costs less than a Tesla -- really, hardly more than a Nissan Leaf. And it has a fully-usable back seat and a decent-sized trunk. And unlike the Nissan Leaf, it's made right here in the good old USA.
And will probably have to stay there last week we had temperatures of -37C with wind chill of -49C. We could hardly get you dino fuel vehicles to work. 4 years ago it was -52C with no wind chill when I woke up in the morning. My fancy lion powered drills stop working at -10C and will not charge below 0C or above 30C.
I went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast this past weekend. Oddly enough, they had three electric car charging stations near the front entrance. I had to laugh because in all three parking spaces was parked a gas guzzler. For the concept to work, you'd need to instate laws to ticket non-electric vehicles or put the spaces so far away that fat people would stay away from them. Unfortunately, you only need an IQ of about 50 to drive and absolutely no manners whatsoever, so it's going to be a difficult problem to solve.
Other than the motor, which is from UQM in Colorado, EVERYTHING from it is Chinese. The Chinese are watching to see if CODA can sell. If so, they are going to simply rip it off, produce it by multiple companies there, and then dump here to destroy CODA.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
>Even with that, .33 KWH is still less than $3/gal gas. And I doubt that we will see 3/gal gas.
no it's not. MotorWeek tested the Nissan leaf vs Chevy Volt, with $3.25 gasoline according to the Volts's computer it produced electricity at $.10/kwHr. My work is Diesiel generator only, they are averaging (with a widely varying load) $.22/kwHr from $3.50 diesel, so I doubt the Leafs computer, but it is within belief.
Also If you look at Tesla's numbers, they claim 120MPG equivalent of $3 gasoline using $.05 / kwhr, take that to $.33 you have 20mpg equivalent.