Startup Excitement Draws Auto Industry Veterans to Tesla and Coda
For many long-time employees of automotive OEMs, the grass can look greener at small up-by-the-bootstraps start-up EV companies, which offer the chance for ambitious engineers and marketing staff to really put their personal stamp on a new model. Instead of designing a door handle, they get to do the entire interior.
Being part of history is part of it, too. Khobi Brooklyn, a spokeswoman for Tesla, said that the company employs veterans of GM, Toyota and other big companies. They come, she said, "for an incredible opportunity to get in on the ground level and be part of a game-changing mission â€" to do something revolutionary." Vice President of Communications Ricardo Reyes said goodbye to a good job at Google subsidiary YouTube (which was about to send him to Europe) after being personally wooed by Tesla's charismatic CEO, Elon Musk. "I came for the challenge and the mission," he said. "Tesla parallels Google and the early days of YouTube."
At Tesla's new quarters in Palo Alto, California, most employees were still working at 6 p.m., and it wasn't because Musk was in the building. "Most of these people haven't had lunch yet," said Reyes.
Santa Monica, California's Coda Automotive, where the staff works in cubicles on a big, open floor and many employees have been there for months, not years, is that same kind of non-hierarchical, go-for-it startup (with the added twist of investment from former Bush and Clinton officials). Coda is bringing its car out at the end of the year, so now it's crunch time for a company that didn't even exist until last year.
Pony-tailed Frank Ehrenberg came to Coda from BMW, where he did design work on the X6 and 3-Series. At Coda just four months, he's already overseen a dramatic overhaul of the interior (which had been the blandest part of the car). "When they called, I decided I wanted to go to a company that would give me the opportunity to innovate," he said.
Bryan Greider, Coda's lead software engineer and a Ford veteran (powertrain, as well as fuel cells and hybrids), jumped ship to Coda because it offered him "exposure to everything. In my other jobs I worked on one or two things, but here I have a real chance to influences changes. I work a lot, and I love it."
Darryl Harrison, a Coda spokesman, spent eight years at Nissan working on dealer communications and lemon law claims. Oddly enough, I encountered him in at Nissan in Nashville just weeks before he left for Coda, and he filled me in on the Nissan Leaf. At Coda in Santa Monica, he gave me a tour of a completely different automobile -- the Coda, which is also a battery sedan with 100-mile range.
Most people have at least heard of the Leaf, but the Coda is hardly a household name, creating a challenge for the sales and marketing department. And that brings us to Aaron Cohen, director of product management and a veteran of Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs and three years in a management program at Toyota. "Coda was an intriguing opportunity," Cohen said. "The biggest challenge is being a new brand with a new vehicle in a new category."
Cohen reports to Mike Jackson, Coda's sales and marketing chief and a seven-year General Motors veteran who led the effort at Chevrolet when it won Car and Truck of the Year with the Silverado and Malibu.
Jackson and Cohen know that Coda (which will initially sell cars only in California) doesn't have the budget for the big media buys that will help the Leaf grow, so they're embracing the Internet. "There are a whole host of sites out there talking to consumers at every phase of the purchase funnel," Jackson said. "People spend four to six hours on the Internet researching cars before they buy. We think the digital space offers Coda a unique ability to invite customers to our website."
That's Coda's early marketing strategy, and those guys get to implement it. They'll undoubtedly work day and night to make it work, because it's their baby, their vision, their chance to make a mark and be part of a revolution in transportation.
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