Miles EV Founder's Electric Sedan Plan Spawns New Company, New Name
By John O'Dell June 3, 2009 
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Miles Rubin has carved out a nice little business, Miles Electric Vehicles, marketing low-speed electric vehicles to commercial and government fleets and now wants to begin selling full-size, full service EVs to you and me.
But not as Miles EV.
As we reported last month, that name will be reserved for the 5-year-old low-speed electric work truck business.
The new business - Coda Automotive - was announced today at a press conference at Coda's Santa Monica headquarters. The name wasn't derived from the Led Zepplin album of the same name but comes from the musical notation for an independent passage that sums up or concludes what came before it.
The company, which plans to start selling a $45,000 (before a $7,500 federal tax credit), 5-seat, mid-sized battery-electric sedan in the last half of 2010, also showed off a prototype of the car (above), which is based on a sedan built by Hafei Motor Co., a smallish Chinese automaker.
Coda chief executive Kevin Czinger also announced that the company has formed a "global" joint venture with its Chinese battery supplier to develop, manufacture and market lithium-ion batteries for transportation and stationary power storage uses and has applied for a federal grant in partnership with a so-far unidentified U.S. battery development company to build an EV battery factory in this country.
Price Matters
Entering the battery business will enable Coda to leverage its core expertise in battery systems design and create revenue stream that can help the company lower the admittedly steep price of its first car, Czinger said in an interview with Green Car Advisor.
Part of the company's marketing message, to help overcome the price, is that a battery-EV has far fewer part than a conventional car or a hybrid-electric car. It needs no engine maintenance, no oil changes and relatively little routine maintenance. Coda figures that will cost the average owner $3 per 100 miles to operate the EV, versus $17 per 100 miles for a 20 mpg conventional car.
The annual savings help lower the total cost of owning an EV, Czinger said, and should help make the Coda more competitive with other EVs such as the model to be launched next year by Nissan Motor Co., and with extended-range plug-in hybrids such as General Motors Corp.'s similarly-priced Chevrolet Volt when they begin appearing in the market in 2011.
Tier 1 Team
Acknowledging that start-up automakers face a tough battle in pursuing consumer acceptance, Czinger said that Coda's marketing strategy will stress its electric sedan's safety and heavy use of components and systems supplied by top-tier companies such as Delphi Corp. (power electronics), Borg-Warner (the single-speed transaxle), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (heating and air conditioning) and Continental (electronic stability control system).
The Coda's 333-volt battery pack, now supplied by the Tianjin Lishen Battery Co., a manufacturer of lithium ion batteries used in laptop computers, cell phones and power tools, will come from the new Coda-Lishen Battery joint venture.
UQM Technologies, a Colorado manufacturer of electric drive motors, is supplying the sedan's 125 kilowatt electric motor and controller.
The powertrain is powerful enough to propel the car from zero to 60 mph in under 11 seconds, on par with the Chevrolet Malibu hybrid, and the battery stores enough juice to give the sedan a range of 90 to120 miles (depends on driving styles) between charges, Czinger said.
Crashing Success
Czinger said Coda hired Germany's Porsche Engineering to help design the car's chassis and crash safety systems and that pre-production prototypes of the EV have been crash-tested under the same protocols used by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety in its 45 mph, 40 percent offset frontal crash and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in its 35 mph head-on collision test.
"The results make us confident that car will get a 4- or 5-star crash test rating" from NHTSA when the production version is run through the agency's front, rear and side collision tests, Czinger said.
With almost evangelical fervor, Czinger describes Coda's business plan as a "mission" to bring the battery-electric vehicle into the automotive mainstream.
He understands, though, that the mission trajectory will start off low and slow and build gradually and calls the first Coda a "catalyst" that can help hasten the mainstreaming of the EV.
It's not a world-class car and subsequent models will have better design, more features and a lower price. But the first-generation Coda, Czinger said, will provide the real world experience that the company needs to further develop its battery and powertrain systems and that consumers need to begin thinking of battery-electric cars as real vehicles for real people.
California First
Initial sales of the electric sedan will be limited to California, to ensure that cars and customers are geographically close to the company as the kinks are worked out of the sales, distribution, quality control and service and maintenance systems.
With a mid-year launch, Coda anticipates sales of just 2,700 vehicles next year, ratcheting up to as many as 10,000 in 2011 and ultimately to 20,000 a year as the car is introduced in other states.
The first Coda will come in just one trim level, with a premium audio system, navigation system and on-board telematics package all standard and the only option a rapid charging system Czinger figures few will purchase because there's no commercial fast-charge infrastructure to support it.
When there is, the Coda quick-charge system will enable the battery pack to take on an 80 percent charge in 15 to 20 minutes and a full charge in 50 minutes, said Broc TenHouten, Coda's engineering vice president.
The standard charging system uses either 110 volt or 220 volt current form standard outlets and can fully charge a depleted battery pack in five to six hours using a 220-volt service, he said. The 110-volt system is basically a trickle charge and takes about 20 hours to fully recharge the battery.
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