Hank Paulson Burned As Another Electric Car Maker Goes Up In Flames

It would appear that (apart from Tesla, for now) that any thing related to electric cars is going up in flames. From Fisker's fubar (and blowing all that hard-earned government funding) and Chevy's Volt dysphoria to A-123 Systems (the Lithium-Ion battery-maker) and now Coda - which Yahoo Finance notes was among an emerging crop of California startups seeking to build emission-free electric cars three years ago.

After selling just 100 of its $37,250 five-passenger vehicles, Coda filed Chapter 11 today taking a few well-known investors with it. On the bright side, the government was not involved (from what we can tell), but on the even brighter side, none other than former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was among those burned by the company going up in flames (as was Harbinger's Phil Falcone).

Despite the $300 million the company managed to raise, that quickly went and unable to raise an additional $150 million in new funding (we suspect blaming 'market conditions' for its mere $22million raise), Coda had no choice (and Fortress was more than happy to scoop it up and provide the DIP - the cars will make for fancy paperweights in a collateral liquidation). 'Green' is the new 'red' as it seems when it comes to electric cars, regardless of funding source - private or public - it goes up in flames. Read more >>

The electric car is Dead

Recent moves by Japan's two largest automakers suggest that the electric car, after more than 100 years of development and several brief revivals, still is not ready for prime time - and may never be.

In the meantime, the attention of automotive executives in Asia, Europe and North America is beginning to swing toward an unusual but promising new alternate power source: hydrogen.

The reality is that consumers continue to show little interest in electric vehicles, or EVs, which dominated U.S. streets in the first decade of the 20th century before being displaced by gasoline-powered cars.

Despite the promise of "green" transportation - and despite billions of dollars in investment, most recently by Nissan Motor Co - EVs continue to be plagued by many of the problems that eventually scuttled electrics in the 1910s and more recently in the 1990s. Those include high cost, short driving range and lack of charging stations.

The public's lack of appetite for battery-powered cars persuaded the Obama administration last week to back away from its aggressive goal to put 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015. Read more >>