Coda Automotive E.V. Test Drive

Coda Automotive revealed its battery electric sedan two weeks ago with a Webinar. On Sunday, I got a short test drive with the company’s president and chief executive, Kevin Czinger, near his home in Greenwich, Conn.

It can be very quiet in the leafy precincts of Greenwich, and the Coda added only a high-pitched whine to the birdsong (and the occasional passing Ferrari) on North Street.

As I wrote in my earlier post, the Coda is based on the Saibao sedan built by the Hafei Automobile Group and powered by a 33.8-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery from the Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Company. Both are Chinese companies, but Mr. Czinger said 30 to 35 percent of the car was made from parts from Western suppliers, including BorgWarner and Lear.

Coda Automotive, based in Santa Monica, Calif., plans to have the car on the market in the fall of 2010 (though in California only). The company said it hoped to sell 2,700 in 2010 and then ramp up the following year to a production capacity of 20,000.

About the size of a Honda Civic, the Coda’s generic Chinese styling has been given a cosmetic front and rear updating by the Porsche Design Studio that includes the addition of LEDs. Build quality, paint and panel fit appeared very good, but the interior was bland and basic for a car that will cost $45,000 (minus a $7,500 federal tax credit).

Read more . . .

Related articles by Zemanta

• We Drive the Aptera, and It’s a Real Car (wired.com)
• GM Opens a Battery Research Lab for the Volt (technologyreview.com)
• Miles Electric’s totally electric family sedan one step closer to existence (engadget.com)

Random Posts:

• New Keys For Diffusion Of Information In Social Networks
• Baseline Scenario: What I Didn’t Get To Say On Bill Maher Last Night
• Mining for Algae: Could Abandoned Mines Help Grow Biofuel?
• New Plastic Optical Fiber Technology May Revolutionize High Speed Last-Mile Communication Networks
• Technology Smooths the Way for Home Wind-Power Turbines

Related posts:

1. Beautiful, Safe, Affordable–And It Gets 100 Mpg: X PRIZE Picks Next Round of Automotive Contestants
2. Tesla Model S: One Whopper of a Battery Pack
3. Group Wants Government to Jump-Start the E.V. Revolution
4. Uncertain Choices in Batteries
5. Automotive X PRIZE events to begin in Michigan from April 2010

Tags: battery, chinese companies, coda, electric car, federal tax credit, hafei automobile, honda civic, Innovation, joint stock company, kilowatt hour, lear, lithium, lithium ion battery, porsche design, tianjin

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Automotive, Innovation, NY Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.