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.

Comments

Electric Charging Stations

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Electric Charging Stations

[vlm]

The malls/some stores around here have special parking spots for hybrid/electric cars that are closer to the entrance than the handicapped spots in some cases. .... Driving an EV does not make you more worthy of a parking spot than anyone else.

It does. You/everyone is paying a couple bucks per foot for that buried heavy gauge wire, so the closer the charger is to the entrance, the less you are paying the electrician, who is paid by the mall owner, who is paid by the shopkeeper, who is paid by ... you.

So its in everyones financial best interests to have the charger as close to the building as possible. Even if you drive a gas guzzler.

The only people who benefit by putting it further away are the copper wire manufacturers.

Re:Electric Charging Stations

[kenh]

So its in everyones financial best interests to have the charger as close to the building as possible. Even if you drive a gas guzzler.

No, it's in everyone's financial best interest for plug-in electric car owners to charge their car at home, and not soak the local shop owner for the electricity their cars consume.

Here's an interesting article on the growing number of charging stations from the WSJ last October:

Charging equipment is popping up largely because of subsidies. As part of a $5 billion federal program to subsidize development of electric vehicles and battery technology, the U.S. Energy Department over the past two years provided about $130 million for two pilot projects that help pay for chargers at homes, offices and public locations.

With less than 20,000 EVs on the road today, that works out to over $6,500 per EV, and since the subsidies only pay for a part of the expense, which can run $2,000 - 7,000 per charger, it's safe to say we have at least two chargers for every EV in the country.

Re:Electric Charging Stations

[slackware 3.6]

Maybe I was not clear there are no chargers just little green signs that say "Electric/Hybrid vehicles only". At Kingsway mall in Edmonton they used to be handicap spots. Also someone has to pay which ultimately is the consumer my second car is a 95 neon that gets almost 40 mpg when the motor or transmission breaks I go to the wrecking yard and buy a used one for $100 to $200. One sometimes two Sundays and it is back on the road and I take the old motor to be melted for scrap, fluids are recycled, rubber is recycled and when its time for another neon (neons are my car of choice due to parts availability and ease of repair) my old one goes the the wrecker and I get $75 a ton for the scrap. Now which is more environmentally responsible my neon or a super expensive EV that most people can not afford.

Re:Electric Charging Stations

[PopeRatzo]

Personally I don't place a high value on a parking place being close to the store. I like to take any opportunity to walk since I spend too much time at work behind a desk.

I think it's fair to say that you are an extraordinary person (especially if you are an American). Bill. If you take a look at what waddling in and out of the doors of Wal-Mart, you will find people who have taken any opportunity to sit on a sofa with a giant bag of chips and a Super-Mega-Gulp of high-fructose corn syrup.

There's a kind of fat going around now that's "not natural" as my grandfather used to say. You don't get that fat just from packing away an extra pork chop or helping of mashed potatoes with dinner. This is genetically-modified fat, science-experiment-gone-wrong fat, industrial-accident fat, out-of-control-tumorous fat. I went to the humongous hardware store a couple of Saturdays ago, and my daughter wanted to stop at Wal-Mart to buy some girl thing. I thought I had crossed some threshold in the metaverse or something. Everybody looked like they were wearing the fat suit that the comedian wears in the movie ("Fat Bastard weighs a metric ton..."). Then I got it in my head that these gargantuan people were looking at my daughter and me like we were some interlopers into their fat world and we didn't belong there and like Children of the Corn Syrup they were going trap me and my daughter in the sporting goods section and sacrifice us to their god of fat. I swear I hurried outside and stood with the few people who were not hugely fat, the smokers, just so I could feel normal again.

My daughter wanted to stop for lunch, but I couldn't possibly eat. This is a true story. There's something serious going on around here. Some 1950's sci-fi horror story of fat. It scares me.

Yes, I'd rather walk from the back of the parking lot, too. Plus, my hooptie is less likely to get scratched that way.

Re:Electric Charging Stations

[Windowser]

my second car is a 95 neon that gets almost 40 mpg when the motor or transmission breaks I go to the wrecking yard and buy a used one for $100 to $200. One sometimes two Sundays and it is back on the road and I take the old motor to be melted for scrap, fluids are recycled, rubber is recycled and when its time for another neon (neons are my car of choice due to parts availability and ease of repair) my old one goes the the wrecker and I get $75 a ton for the scrap. Now which is more environmentally responsible my neon or a super expensive EV that most people can not afford.

The more environmentally responsible is a car that you don't have to change the motor / transmission every year.
You should try a good car for a change, maybe a Toyota or a Honda. I've run a Tercel to more than 600,000 km on the original engine/transmission.
Those Neons are junk, even when new.

*Not* made in the USA

[tgd]

Final assemby is in the USA. Most of the chassis is made in China, and the rest of the parts are sourced from various places around the world.

Unlike, say, a Hyundai which is almost entirely made in the US.

6.6 kW/240VAC input

[slackware 3.6]

And if you buy one you are going to need to hire an electrician. And if you rent or live in a condo/apartment try finding a 240v plug in the parkade. Or a landlord that will let you install one. And power in 15c a kW/h plus transmission charges 33c per kW/h.

Re:6.6 kW/240VAC input

[Doc Ruby]

All a 240V plug is, is two 120V plugs that share a ground, on two separate circuits from the panel. Adapters that combine them at the outlets cost $50 each retail or less. An electrician will charge something like $100 to run a new pair of 120V circuits from your panel if necessary. At 6.6KW, 240V means 27.5A, so each 120V line needs only 30A. Which means the whole thing is exactly like installing an electric oven, which is a pretty common little project.

Once there's more than one or two plugin cars in a parking lot the owners will install the 240V outlets. Because they'll attach a meter that charges more than they pay the grid. A grid that doesn't charge $0.33:KWh; the NYC Con Ed rate is highest in the country at $0.21:KWh. And that's if you don't have Time Of Use (TOU) rates, which charge under $0.15:KWh at night and through the Winter, which is when you'd charge your car at home.

So in fact the economics of plugin cars makes a lot of sense. Which is why many thousands have already been sold. Of course as that number turns to millions the grid needs upgrades for the switch in power distribution from gas to electric, even though at greater efficiency (fewer source joules per mile travelled). But that problem isn't here yet, and the solutions are already in the works (including decentralized generation, like onsite where the charging happens).

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. Is there some oil corp chain email going around?

NOT MADE IN THE USA

[WindBourne]

The car is made in China. All that CODA does is install a UQM motor (American made with Chinese parts), Chinese made electronics and a chinese made battery.
This car is 99% Chinese.

Standard arguments

[vlm]

Well lets get the standard arguments out of the way so newer, more interesting discussions can happen

1) It ONLY GOES 150 MILES? I always drive 151 miles per trip, even if its only to the corner store I drive around the block 604 times because I love to drive! Why my commute is over 5 hours per day, each way, because I'm a True American (TM) and you "30 minute commute" people are wimps, democrats, terrorists, or whatever..

2) If it can't charge in 5 minutes its dead to me. I only sleep in 3 hour shifts before moving to a new location because the T9000 is after me, so it would never get a chance to charge and I only travel to and from places that have no AC power service because otherwise my tinfoil hat sparks excessively.

3) One model vehicle cannot meet the needs of all buyers, therefore all electric vehicles are useless, because one model of gasoline car meets all human needs. What you say, there are more than one model of gas vehicle? Oh.

4) It doesn't work too well below -40 degrees C/F so I can't buy it. Sure, I live in southern Florida, but I'm worried about resale value. Oh you say my gas vehicle doesn't work too well at -40 either? So what, everyone knows that, I just felt the need to point this out about electrical cars, because I'm sure none of you lowly serfs would think of that yourselves.

5) My gas car's SLI battery was carefully engineered to fail in 3 years to maximize corporate profits, and surprise, surprise, it fails every 3 years. I'm sure an electric car will fail in 3 years too, and I don't care if the average Prius battery was engineered to last the life of the car, and in fact it does last the life of the car, you can't force me to think so I won't. Nahh naahhh nahhhhhh! I don't believe in engineering and you shouldn't either.

6) I will not be satisfied until an automated robot tentacle snakes out of the wall and plugs itself into the charger socket, mostly because I want to watch youtube videos of what the tentacle inserts in women wearing miniskirts. I don't care if everyone north of the mason dixon line already has a block heater and battery heater and battery trickle charger and they perfectly successfully use it every time it gets below zero, because I'm certain no one will ever be able to plug a car in when they park, after all, I don't, so no one in the whole universe every has, can, or will.

7) What is the charger connector going to be, there is no standard. I don't care if there actually is a perfectly good deployed standard which I could find on wikipedia if I wanted, I just like to post this every singe time there is an electric car article. Also, did you know there is no standard low voltage DC connector? Oh wait, there is. Oh how I love to post this over and over.

8) Thousands of american military personnel have died for oil, and its disrespectful of their memory not to burn as much gasoline as humanly possible, after all you don't want their relatives to think they died for nothing. My Chinese imported yellow support the troops ribbon sticker on the trunk of my 8 MPG SUV absolves me of all guilt, much like purchasing a pre-reformation indulgence.

I think that'll do it, does anyone have anything NEW to offer to the standard lineup of /. electric car stories?

I think Tesla maybe has better business model

[JSBiff]

It seems to me the problem with trying to create a new technology sedan for the "everyman" is that, in order to get "everyman" pricing, you need the kinds of economies of scale you just can't get when you make 10,000 or 12,000 cars.

I think that GM made a huge mistake with the Volt. I love the idea of a volt - a plugin hybrid that uses electricity till it can't, then uses gas when necessary.

The problem is, it seems they made a car with no glamour or mystique to it. If you're going to only make 10,000 vehicles and they are going to be more expensive than most people can afford, then just go ahead and make it a luxury car. The volt should have been a Cadillac, not a Chevy. It should have had lots of interior luxury and beautiful exterior that was to die for. Maybe it should have cost $50,000+.

GM should have done everything it could to make it the year's "It Car", getting tv, movie, music and athletic celebrities, the children of the rich, and hipster-CEO's to buy it as a green conspicuous consumption item. Then, use those profits to ramp up the economies of scale. Meanwhile, the "average joe" sees all the "cool rich people" driving them, and maybe has increased desire for one of them.

That seems to be the model that Tesla is pursuing. I think GM could have had more clout to get the Volt to be an "It Car" if they had pursued that strategy, but since they didn't, I wish Tesla luck.

Powered by... Coal?

[bobs666]

As long as we understand electric cars are powered by Coal! Until we figure out that that wind, water, corn, grass, and geothermal power will never meet the demand for powering our cars. That Nuclear power is the only practical green solution. Electric cars will not reduce pollution no there own. None the less electric cars do allow for alternative power solutions. And we will run out of petrol sooner or later.

Re:But why?

[TheRaven64]

$37k for a car that can travel *up to* 150 miles on a full charge? My diesel fiat cost less than half that, can go *up to* 400 miles on a tank of the dirty stuff and when I put my foot down it goes like a scalded cat (gotta love turbos).

150 miles means that most commuters never need to charge it anywhere except at home. They just park it in the charging spot each night and it's ready to go in the morning. No more visits to petrol stations to fill up the car, except when you're making a long trip.

Still not seeing the market viability for full electric cars amongst the real road warriors (30k+ miles p.a.) who, let's face it, are the group of drivers that pollute most.

Per capita? Sure. In total? I doubt it. The people doing their daily 30 mile commute each way outnumber the road warriors by a huge amount. Get them all into electric cars, and you can easily switch the energy source to nuclear, solar, or whatever.