The last few months have been transformative for Coda Automotive. Their plan had been to start selling cars in November last year, but that fell through. Rather, just before the LA Auto Show their CEO and Chef Marketing Officer both left the company, and they announced a production delay. They expect to start production in late 2011, rather than the late 2010 previously announced.
Since then they've been making a series of announcements indicating they're lining up funding and moving ahead with production plans. It seems that the delay was to give more time for quality assurance of the design.
However on Friday and today they made a pair of announcements which indicate a new focus on grid storage products.
On Friday they named a new CEO and during the conference call spent some time talking about grid storage products. Then today, they named two new members of the Board of Directors. Both the new Directors have deep experience in the global power and utilities industry. Together one would think they're planning to launch a line of grid storage products.
The main thing Coda brings to the table is battery pack design expertise. Their VP of Battery Systems, Phil Gow, has 20+ years of experience in battery systems. He worked for Ovonics/Cobasys during the EV1 days, for example. He's a nice guy, very knowledgable (I met him once). They also have this joint venture with a Chinese battery company, Lishen.
