New Electric Sedan Has Big Backers

(CNET)  This story was written by CNET's Martin LaMonica.

Electric sedan maker Coda Automotive has attracted some well connected people with latest round of funding, including former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson.

The company, which plans to sell an all-electric sedan in California next year, said on Tuesday that it has completed a series B round of $24 million in equity. The money will be used to bring its car to market and fund a joint venture to manufacture the car battery.

In addition to Paulson, President Clinton's former chief of staff, Thomas "Mack" McLarty, invested and will become a board member. Other investors include investment bank Piper Jaffray, energy investor Tom Steyer, former Edison International CEO John Bryson, and company executives.

Although its corporate headquarters are in Santa Monica, California, Coda Automotive has partnered for both design and manufacturing of its planned car.

The chassis for the car will be manufactured by Chinese-state owned carmaker, Hafei. While working for President George W. Bush, Paulson led in U.S.-Chinese economic relations and he is an advocate for conservation in the U.S. and China, according to Coda. The company's flexible business model will also allow the company to get its product to market earlier than other electric automakers, said Coda Automotive president and CEO Kevin Czinger in statement.
By Martin LaMonica

[midlclass]

I agree with the others here buikd them in the states! Here again it's the greed of a bigger profit margin. when will Corperate people learn. if i'm living off of a $10 or 12 dollar an hour job i can't aford to buy a new vehicle at any price over ten thousand. these guys need to remember Ole Henry even though he didn't like it he knew he had to pay his pople enough that they could afford to buy a vehicle after they paid there bills.

[smoknmirrors]

Actually, I think Henry was forced to do that. "E.C. Elsik began work in the Dallas plant in 1935. He had previously worked at the Ford plant in Houston which was shut down in 1932. He describes the working conditions. ?There were no relief breaks, no lunch periods, nothing to break the terrible speedup. You were really driven. There was no time to talk, to say hello to anybody. You ate lunch with a sandwich in one hand and worked with the other.? He was invited by a foreman to join a goon squad to ?take care? of any union organizers that might show up, but managed to decline the offer.

Rex Young had worked for Ford in Oklahoma City. He came to Dallas in 1936 and went to work at the Ford plant sanding car bodies. He comments on plant practices. ?Ford made a lot of money cheating his workers. We used to work 12 to 15 hours a day sometimes and get paid for only eight. The plant rules said that if the line was down for five minutes, you punched out for at least a full hour. So many a time the foreman would stop the line, after five minutes we would punch out and then go right back to work---on our own time--- until the hour was up. Many and many a time we gave Ford 55 minutes of free labor that way. There was no way to argue, no matter what they did to us---no one to argue with or run to for help. If you opened your mouth or just looked like you were going to, out you went, and that was that.?[xxv] The Ford labor practices were much the same in Dallas as they were in Michigan." (barksdale.eta.edu)

Ford paid $5 an hour, a very good wage. But his vehicle was designed to appeal to the farmers and others in the surrounding areas, not his employees. He considered his employees chattel and "brainless" else why would they submit to working on an assembly line? His spying operation on his employees was almost as good as the CIA's. I'm must saying let's not romanticize people who were interested in the dollar, not the person, to the same extent Chinese manufacturers are. What we should be concerned about is that in a Chinese designed and manufactured vehicle we are trapped with their toxic residues for hours on end. They kill us and we encourage them to make a buck doing it.

[jmeaobrien]

And How many JOBs will this create in the United States of America?

[Resin-Smoker]

QUOTE:" sjc_1 July 28, 2009 10:37 PM EDT
The idea is to charge EVs at night when extra power is available. The state utilities have calculated that they can charge millions of EVs at night without building any new power plants."

The end result is still the same, as many power plants that would normaly spool down at night as energy usage is decreased will be forced to stay online to fuel the SUV's of 400 million soccer moms!

Ideally... Each home should be required by law to have a PV cell installed to service the vehicle. New homes should have this installed from inception, where exsisting homes should be converted.

As for the issue with China: Screw'um!

If it doesn't serve to create jobs here, build a stable economy and tax base... Nothing that comes out of China, nothing, no matter how efficent, is worth the money it's bought with.

Last time i checked... very few of the mass market goods sold here are made in the United States now. This is something we as a people should be ashamed of and something our politicians should be shot for.

[sjc_1]

50% of the power produced in the west is from natural gas. Renewable methane from biomass can provide the energy to run a 70% efficient combined cycle power plant 24/7 and would be CO2 neutral from the CO2 absorbed by the plants while growing.

I would like to see more PV on home roofs, but that is unlikely to happen on a large scale due to personal budget/debt constraints. You have to go with what is possible and not just wish and hope with some so called grand vision. We can talk about it or we can do something and the most effective action we can take is on a large scale. More gets done in a quicker time frame working together than going it alone.

[xmissile]

Unless the primary components are made and assembled here, I won't even consider this vehicle. The SS America is being swamped by Chinese made products. Adding cars will put the final nail in the coffin.

[sjc_1]

The idea is to charge EVs at night when extra power is available. The state utilities have calculated that they can charge millions of EVs at night without building any new power plants.

[Resin-Smoker]

If the car were "Made" 100% in the United States I'd buy one. No way am i going to hand my money overseas were it doen't do another American any good!

[fiberglass3]

But isn't that what you are doing every time you fill your current vehicle with gasoline?
Imported oil.