Electric Cars

[Wezil]

Santa Monica (essentially a suburb of Los Angeles) based Coda Automotive plans on selling their new all electric mid sized sedan in California starting with the 2010 model year. The car is essentially made in China and based on a Chinese car built by Hafei Automotive though they build their own electric motor and started a new joint venture in China to build li-Io batteries.

Awesome. I can't wait to get my very own Chinese go-cart car.

[Dinner]

Coda Automotive has decided to slow their roll out due to the recession. Instead of having a dealer network they now plan to sell the car direct to consumers via the internet and have the car made to order in China and then shipped to the US. I don't believe they've passed the federal safety laws yet though because you can still only pre-order one instead of actually buy one. It was originally supposed to launch with the 2010 model year but that's clearly out the window now.

They do have a spiffy website though: http://www.codaautomotive.com/index.html
A Forbes right up done a little less then a year ago: http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/19/cod...car-qanda.html

I honestly don't think Coda is going to make it. Being the first to sell a small four door electric car is what will get the press and right now all the major Japanese brands are coming up with electric cars, China's BYD is already selling them in China and it has way deeper pockets then Coda, and even GM and Ford are working on mass market electric cars. Unless Coda gets in before the big boys and makes a bigger splash I don't see them surviving especially not trying to sell a Chinese made $15,000 car for "the mid $30,000's".

[Wezil]

I'm not against electric in theory but until the cars get larger and with longer range I'm not at all interested.

[Dinner]

I personally think air powered cars are more practical then electric cars as they cost a lot less ($10k-$15k) and can be refueled in just 2-3 minutes. Sure, the top speed is relatively low (68mph) but for city driving most people don't even go that fast plus you have a 125 mile range per fill.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/preview-concept/4217016

[Wezil]

I regularly drive 120km/h and trips of 400-500km. I think I'll be waiting awhile for an alternative fuel vehicle.


My only concern with electric is the pollution is moved from your tailpipe to the power station. I'm not convinced moving the source of the pollution is really all that effective particularly since many jurisdictions rely heavily upon coal for power generation.

[N35t0r]

Then again, a large power station can generally be more efficient than n amount of small cars (and much easier to control re. emissions)

[Dinner]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10138918.stm

The BBC is saying Toyota bought 2.5% of Tesla for $50 million (valuing the company at $2 billion) while Daimler already owns 10% of Tesla. The deal officially forms a cooperation between Tesla and Toyota where Toyota will provide the NUMMI plant to build Tesla cars and Toyota will assist Tesla in moving to mass production and quality control. This is really a smart move by Tesla as it means they get help from both Toyota and Daimler while the two foreign firms get access to Tesla's state of the art battery and electronic motor technology. The guys from Silicon Valley do know electronics & batteries better then just about anyone while Toyota and Daimler know the ins and outs of mass producing cars and can offer platforms and parts which can really lower costs for Tesla. This is an extremely promising development if you are interested in electric cars.

[Dinner]

I find the $2 billion valuation of Tesla amazing considering Ford recently sold both Jaguar and Land Rover to India's Tata Motors for just $2.3 billion. Worse as part of the deal Ford promised to pay $600 million into Jaguar and Land Rover's pension plan so really Ford only netted $1.7 billion on the sale. They bought the two firms for ~$5 billion and had invested billions bringing the brands up to date over the last 20 years and then they just gave it all away.

The big 3 are just horrible, horrible business managers who make the same mistakes over and over again. They always seem to buy high when times are good then sell low the second the industry hits a cyclical down turn. It's just moronic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/business/worldbusiness/26iht-jaguar.4.11446168.html

[Dinner]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127140659

The current speculation is that Toyota wants to build both an electric and a hybrid version of the Toyota Corolla in the NUMMI plant which would mean Tesla's 3rd car would be based on the Toyota Corolla platform. That does give them a practical low cost platform but I'm not sure how that would jive with the luxury car image Tesla has been trying to cultivate.

[-Jrabbit]

Tesla IPO goes live; stock rises 10%

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/business/30tesla.html?nl=&emc=aua21

[DanS]

Rather, it closed up 40% to $24 per share.

[-Jrabbit]

10% was the first day net.

40% in 2 days is a pretty sweet ROI.

[DanS]

No, that's one day net. They were offered at $17 this morning, closed at $24.

That article is from earlier in the day, well before close.

[-Jrabbit]

Weird. I swear that it said 10%, starting at $17, closing at $18.75.

But you're right; it says 40%. Either it changed since my initial reading of it, of my bionic vision is playing tricks on me...

[Dinner]

http://www.contracostatimes.com/business/ci_15319921?source=rss&nclick_check=1

Sadly, the Corolla will not be made at the reopened NUMMI like it used to be. Without the Corolla line being made there I don't see a third car for Tesla coming any time soon.