Posts Tagged ‘Coda Automotive’
Coda to build “affordable EV”; pulls DOE loan app.
Coda Automotive has announced plans to build an entry-level EV with China’s Great Wall Motors, a company that will display its first EV at the 2012 Beijing International Automotive Exposition, which opens Friday.
That news comes as Coda also announced the withdrawal of its DOE loan application to build vehicles in this country. In its new deal, the manufacturing would start in China and wrap up in California, home to Coda’s headquarters.
Cars and the NYTimes
Ok, so maybe cars and Tom Friedman and Henry Ford 2nd.
Sunday’s Times featured an excellent column by Friedman. I know I’m constantly referencing him, but the guy’s won three Pulitzers. Anyway, his latest has to do with electric cars, as in banking on them. And who does he quote? Shai Agassi of Better Place and Kevin Czinger of Coda Automotive. Both companies I’m proud to say were represented on the panel of the Washington Auto Show’s Green Car Summit on electrification in the auto industry. Here’s a shot of the panelists in the beautiful Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building last year.
The man speaking is Scott Becker, Sr. Vice President, Administration & Finance of Nissan North America Inc. To the right of Becker is Kevin Czinger, CEO of Coda Automotive. All the way to the right is Jason Wolf, VP of Better Place.
Here’s the column: http://tinyurl.com/283ju4v
Meanwhile, the Times also had an interesting section devoted to celebrating the 40th anniversary of the op/ed page. For the occasion, the paper highlighted some remarkable comments over the years, including this very prescient quote by Henry Ford 2nd more than 30 years ago. Enjoy:
Op-Ed Contributor
Nov. 28, 1973: Life With Cars
By HENRY FORD 2
Published: September 25, 2010
Even before the Arab oil embargo, policymakers and editorial writers were concluding that one part of the solution to the energy crisis, the environmental crisis and the urban crisis is to build mass transit with highway funds and to persuade drivers to walk, ride bicycles or take a train.
New car sales in the United States, on the other hand, have increased by more than a million a year during the past two model years. Nearly one-third of all American families now own at least two cars, and 95 percent of all urban traveling is done by car.
Cars and mass transit are both here to stay, but neither one is the best possible answer to the important travel needs of today’s cities. For all its flexibility, the car is not the most efficient way to get to or move around in very busy places. For all its efficiency in carrying large numbers of people along busy corridors, mass transit is not flexible enough.
What we need are new kinds of vehicles and systems designed to carry people quickly, conveniently and efficiently where neither cars nor conventional transit can do the job as well. As these new systems are developed and built, cars will become more useful than ever because they will be used where they work best.
The preceding was excerpted and adapted from a previously published Op-Ed article, for inclusion in a 40th-anniversary issue.
