Coda Automotive Means To Sell 50,000 Electric Cars By 2015

The United States hasn’t exactly been a huge market for electric vehicles. Between the “happy motoring” past which evokes images of fuel-sucking muscle cars roaring into the night or a gigantic 1953 Ford Colossus ambling down the road on a sunny Sunday at a whopping 3.1 miles per gallon, and the various problems that electrics would face in, say, winter (the thought of some lightweight car on icy roads fills me with a dread colder than the ice on the road), it’s not exactly conducive to sales here for electric vehicles. But Coda Automotive’s taken up the gauntlet and means to sell fully 50,000 electrics by 2015–and most of them in the United States.

Coda’s record of meeting its stated goals isn’t exactly top-notch so far–they originally, according to reports, had planned to start selling electric sedans in California by the end of last year, which it has not met–but give them credit for sheer chutzpah, they’re going on with the goal-setting. They’re planning to get started selling after June of this year (the second half of the year is the current word), and they mean to not only sell at least 10,000 cars in its first complete year of operations, but they also mean to sell fully 50,000 total by 2015, again, mostly in the US.
A tall order by any stretch of the imagination, compounded by the fact that Coda’s sedans run fully $37,400 (and that’s with the government’s tax credits for buying this kind of thing), will get between 90 and 120 miles on a charge and will take fully six hours to go from dead battery to fully charged.
Explanations as to how they plan to overcome the various objections they’ll meet–like trying to sell these in economically depressed areas, or in areas that get a lot of snow and ice (seriously, can anyone else see one of these teeny little things going through a foot-deep drift of packed snow?)–are somewhat short on the ground. But they’ve got the plan in mind (maybe they mean to stick to areas that don’t get a lot of snow?), and so, they’re going with it.
It remains to be seen if they can pull it off, but you’ve got to give them credit for sheer effort

Posted in: automobile industery