At $4,000, Is This 2012 Coda EV The Last Word In Value?
The seller of today’s Nice Price or No Dice Coda claims the company that built it went bankrupt because the car was “too nice.” Let’s see if this weird little electric car’s current price (see what I did there?) won’t break the bank.
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High mileage or not—and 207K is pretty high—asking just $2,999 for a fully functioning car like yesterday’s 2004 Volvo XC70 will win you some kudos. In our Volvo’s case, that meant a stellar 88 percent Nice Price win and an apparent sale in the real world before we could even finish our voting.
Today’s 2012 Coda EV might prove a harder sell than yesterday’s Volvo. It is, after all, a grand more expensive and comes from a company that no longer exists and that practically no one has ever heard of. To make matters worse, the 31kWh Lifepo4 battery that gives the car its go has lost some of its cells, limiting the range to around 25 to 30 miles.
When new, and with all its Energizer Bunnies drumming away, the Coda could do a claimed 100 miles on a charge. That’s not bad for a commuter and a bit better than the 85 or so miles that could be wrung out of the electrics from established manufacturers at the time.
The issue was, however, that the Coda arrived at the same time as Tesla’s Model S, and that car rewrote the book on what an EV could be. The Coda’s other major problem was that it cost nearly $40K to buy and offered materials and build quality that make Russian toilet paper seem luxurious by comparison. I know; I test-drove one right at the introduction, and it was pretty terrible.
Who, then, might this oddball broken EV be for? Well, probably some YouTuber like Kyle Conner or the national treasure otherwise known as Robert Dunn.
Kyle bought a moldering Coda last year for the princely sum of one dollar, and Dunn of Aging Wheels and Under Dunn fame has freaking four of them. What’s one more added to the heap? Also, Robert has done battery work on one or more of his Codas—replacing cells, load balancing, etc.—so this car’s problems would probably be a trifle for him.
For whoever grants this car a reprieve from the scrapper, the battery seems to be the only part that has gone seriously wrong. Everything else looks complete, and the car does appear to charge without issue. Maybe even more amazingly, according to the ad, it’s done a substantial 62,000 miles.
That’s a lot to do in any shitbox and is even more remarkable when you consider the Coda’s mediocre performance and terrible recharge time. These have a 6.6 kW onboard charger, which requires six hours of downtime to fill even its meager 31 kW battery. Since it runs off of household 220, that can be handled while the owner sleeps or is maybe out partying. I’m not one to judge how someone spends their late nights.
There’s also the now-laughable notoriety of the plaque in front of the shifter knob to consider. That proudly denotes this car as number 3 of 500. Unfortunately, Coda never got to even that modest number as the company filed bankruptcy in 2013, shutting down production after only 117 cars were built and sold. Today, it’s little more than a blip on the EV timeline and fodder for quirky YouTube content. Could that be worth the $4,000 the seller is asking for this clean-title car? The seller concocts a grand scheme to support that price by claiming that an electric utility rebate of the same amount would make this car’s cost fall to just that of the registration. We’ll take that with a grain of lithium.
What’s your take on the Coda saga and that $4K asking? Does that seem fair, considering the car’s condition? Or, at that price, is a no-sale a fitting coda for this EV?
You decide!
San Francisco Bay Area, California, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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