Coda in Talks for Battery-Assembly Plant Site Near Downtown L.A.
By John O'Dell April 14, 2010
By Danny King, Contributor
Coda Automotive is in discussions with the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency about taking over a 20-acre downtown L.A. property and building a battery assembly facility as the Santa Monica, Calif., automaker prepares to debut its battery-electric sedan (left) later this year.
The redevelopment agency is scheduled to vote Thursday on an exclusive negotiation agreement with Coda for the property, which is just west of the Los Angeles River and would be used for battery-pack assembly, according to CRA documents.
The site is part of the city's so-called "Cleantech Corridor," a four mile stretch in which Los Angeles is trying to attract sustainable industries over the next four years with incentives such as tax credits for job creation, reduced electricity rates and low-interest loans.
It s unclear whether Coda is attempting to purchase the property or wants to lease it. Neither redevelopment agency officers nor executives with Coda responded today to requests for comment.
Coda is looking to compete as an independent automaker with a five-passenger electric sedan just as Nissan and General Motors prepare to launch electric-drive vehicles of their own -Nissan's five-passenger compact Leaf battery-electric hatchback and Chevrolet's four-seat Volt extended-range plug-in hybrid.
Coda is upgrading a Chinese-built sedan and outfitting it with a proprietary electric drive system. The cars will be assembled in China and initially will be sold only in California.
Te Los Angeles factory apparently would be used to put finishing touches on battery packs that would be assembled from components made at the Chinese battery plans Coda owns jointly with Lishen Power Battery
While its mainstream competitors have billions in existing infrastructure and development funding, Coda is starting from scratch. It recently announced that it and Lishen had secured a $294 million line of credit with China-based Bank of Tianjin Joint-Stock Co. Ltd.
The automaker hopes to deliver as many as 14,000 all-electric cars within its first year of production. The cars will come with a roughly $40,000 price tag - about 25 percent more than the $32,780 price tag Nissan put on its all-electric Leaf last month - before factoring in the federal and state tax credits available for buyers of plug-in electric vehicles.
The Coda EV, along with the Leaf and the Volt, would qualify for a $7,500 federal credit and, in California, an additional $5,000 state credit.
The L.A. redevelopment group. a public agency that helps streamline and fund new development, bought the site in question in 2008 and has since removed 46,000 cubic yards of contaminated dirt, according to agency documents. The property had formerly been used by Crown Coach Corp. to build school buses.
Coda isn't the only EV company with an eye on L.A.
Electric roadster maker Tesla Motors is in discussions with the Los Angeles County cities of Downey and Long Beach as its seeks a plant that would be use to build the upcoming Tesla Model S electric sedan.
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