New Electric Car Coming to California in 2010: the CODA Sedan
Are you considering to license the battery technology to other companies?
The first step is to commercialize the batteries in the cars. The real limit is ramping up on production of batteries, which will also limit the avialability of vehicles. It could be a few years out before these batteries are licensed or sold to OEMs.
How many vehicles are now available in the US?
There are about 10 vehicles in the US, 20 vehicles worldwide currently being tested.
Where do you estimate you are in the crash certification process?
The CODA sedan has already been through the front-end crash testing (40mph, 40% offset test) and other 35mph full frontal impact tests. Based on that, which is over a year of testing, CODA says the car will achieve a minimum NCAP 4-star rating, but believes it will receive will get 5-star rating. The primary factor there is going to be the advanced airbags they’ve been developing for the last year.
How unique is the chassis?
It’s borrowed from an existing platform that Porsche helped adapt. CODA did this in order to have speed to market, and they wanted to focus on the key enabling technology: the battery technology. They we’re looking for a combination of mass manufacturing plus technology and engineering support. Using the existing mass manufacturing capability enabled a faster market entrance and lower costs overall. The end result is safe car that meets CODA’s vehicle requirements.
How do you address the question of Chinese build quality?
CODA is overseeing the manufacturing of these cars. The first step is to test the chassis and do an audit to match it to all requirements available. Testing is ongoing, and is overseen by qualified engineers. The focus is on quality. Rather than think about where the car is built, look at what processes are being used and who the company teams with.
Do you actually think you will sell 20,000 per year or is that the max capacity?
The company wants to sell 2700 in 2010 in in 2011 will look at other markets. The 20,000 number is the max capacity of manufacturing.
Hmm, CODA or Chevy? Range anxiety or range extender?
The more electric vehicles the better, but CODA needs to compete. It’s not competing with the Chevy Volt in that price range and with that look, it’s no Tesla.
$15,000.00 in subsidies to make it nominally competitive. And it has no quick charge from dead capability of less than one hour to over 50%.
No thanks, I’ll stick with diesel.
That is a good point… does it have potential to be competitive? Maybe if it comes out first…
Heh. So Miles finally picked a name for his boring electric car. I was struck by the fact that he had left the name and branding till the end:
“for the last few years made just one image available, that looked as if it was snipped from an old Life Magazine.
They allowed the image to drift about desultorily in the blogosphere for several years, not bothering to control the branding.
Even the name - Javlon, and now, XS500; was just temporary: they will name it this year.”
details of the Miles Coda at Green Car Congress
Sorry - GreenCarCongress
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/06/coda-20090603.html#more
Oh My DOGS! Let me get this straight.. Former U.S. public officials took our tax money from TARP in a windfall and used it to bring Coda Chinese cars to the United States to compete with the American auto industry and put Americans out of work after they (The Goldman Sachs insiders) helped cause the American Recession!!! What!!!!???