We had an interesting discussion about Coda Automotive's bleak prospects over on a thread about Better Place
There's been recent news that pretty much says Coda is toast. In their latest quarterly filing, UQM pretty much flat out said that Coda was a goner. Coda got several million dollars worth of drive train parts from UQM and hasn't paid a penny for them during 2012, and paid only a small amount during 2011. Sometime during 2012 UQM determined that Coda was likely to fail as a going concern, and set aside some money to cover the expected loss. For the last quarter of 2012 UQM then took a $3.8 million charge because of Coda.
I sure hope UQM won't die because of Coda's problems.
http://www.torquenews.com/1075/uqm-writes-coda-piling-doubts-codas-survival
Earlier Coda had had a couple rounds of layoffs in November and December.
http://www.torquenews.com/1075/coda-automotive-furloughs-more-employees-bolster-finances
A bad company, with a bad product, with bad connections and backers.
It's not an unreasonable assumption, nor a baseless conspiracy theory to believe that Coda was always just a scam to attract hundreds of millions in DOE funding.
The fact that this funding was eventually refused (after initial approval) was thanks to the concerted and co-ordinated press and lobbying campaign.
The last thing the EV industry needs is another funding scandal involving tax-payer funds.
marcopolo