[The Vector] CODA – An Oddity in the Electrical Vehicle Space

One generally considers that people with a lot of money are smart; after all, it was Aesop who told us 2500 years ago: “A fool and his money are soon parted.”  But some of us are having difficulty understanding how CODA, the electric vehicle company whose planned introduction of a lithium-ion powered sedan appears to be floundering, continues to raise huge amounts of money from apparently intelligent investment bankers and venture capitalists.

Yesterday, CODA took in a Series D preferred investment round of $76 million, which brings the company’s total invested capital to over $200 million. CODA says it will use the funding to start of production of the company’s flagship all-electric vehicle, the CODA Sedan.

The company also plans to develop its own battery systems. Might there be some magic there? Who knows?

But it seems incredible that a company whose product shows so little imagination and competitive differentiation, fraught with nothing but delays and other let-downs to investors and to the market as a whole, priced unattractively, is having such amazing success in raising huge amounts of capital.  And all this in an economic environment in which $2 trillion is sitting on the sidelines, nervously hoarded by risk-averse investors.

It’s a strange world in which we live.