Up first, spotted skulking about the Western Addition, which certainly would make sense, comes the whip of the Pariah Nation, North Korea’s BFF. Check out the cutesy numbers and letters on the quasi-Fed-issued consul license plate.
Click to expand
(And, ironically, the car is the flagship model of the world-famous Tahara Plant, the finest car factory in the world since the 1980′s. Thomas L. Firedman still has a total boner for it.- he took the tour and got the T-shirt. My ride was made there well, AAMOF. Actually, I passed through there just last month, you know, on bidness. That’s the country that got all invadey starting about a century ago ’til about seven decades ago. Hey, who’s invading Filipino islands these days? I’ll give you just one guess! Ooh, my ride had a cheesy SERRAMONTE license plate holder as well. But I didn’t even buy my car there, so WTF was that for, who told you to put that thing on? Not just plastic bolts, metal. I couldn’t get them off myself so they had to do it for me. But while I was down there one time, I told the extreeeeeemely cute front line sales rep that she ought to sue for harassment if what I saw and heard was routine. Guess what – she got together with her friends and took action by hiring some law firm/lawyer and ended up getting a ton of money from the dealership group. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Oh and that’s the same dealership where bay area favorite son Tom Hanks got a nice SUV, also from Tahara, also the best in the world, about a half-decade back. I’ll tell you about that sometime too. But I digress…)
Up next comes Taiwan. Poor Taiwan! See that, “FOREIGN ORGANIZATION,” like it’s not even a country.
5006.5. (a) The department may issue, for a fee determined by the department to be sufficient to reimburse the department for actual costs incurred pursuant to this section, distinctive license plates for motor vehicles owned or leased by an officer or a designated employee of a foreign organization recognized by the United States pursuant to the Taiwan Relations Act (22 U.S.C. Sec. 3301 et seq.) when the department is otherwise satisfied that the issuance of the license plates is in order.
(b) The distinctive license plates shall be designed by the department and shall contain the words “Foreign Organization.”
(c) The department shall establish procedures for both of the following:
(1) To verify the eligibility of an applicant for plates issued pursuant to this section.
(2) To authorize a recognized foreign organization to apply on behalf of its officers for plates issued pursuant to this section.
Added Ch. 397, Stats. 1994. Effective January 1, 1995.”
“Whatever You Do, DON’T Put $499 Down on the $45K, Mostly Chinese, All-Electric Coda Sedan
I’ll tell you, the Mitsubishi Carisma didn’t exactly slay the European market when it went on sale a decade and a half ago. Simply, it wasn’t popular. Then a regional car maker in China tried to take the design from Mitsu and make a version to sell to the Chinese in 2005. It wasn’t popular there neither, even at a price of just $10,000. It, as they say, “lacked quality to make a mark“ in the Chinese market. O.K. then.
Should California and the feds give you tax credits to buy this thing if all Coda Automotive is going to do is raise the price sky high?
What a POS this thing is. Just look at it. In some ways better, and in some ways worse than your sister’s ’94 Honda Civic:
Now, they’re going to have a showroom in the bay area soon and they’re going to let you take a test drive starting next month. Fine, test drive the thing, I don’t care. But don’t give them a deposit, don’t encourage them.
All right, what about the all-electric Nissan LEAF, the Coda Sedan’s arch-rival? The LEAF is better and cheaper.
Here’s what an overly-excited CODA fan was saying about the LEAF last year:
Why does the CODA cost so much more than the Chinese design it’s based upon?
Here’s another question:
How on Earth can people call the CODA an American car if the bulk of it, the glider (basically the entire car except for the battery/transmission) is made in one factory in China and the giant battery is made in another factory in China? What’s that, you wait for the boats to arrive in L.A. County Contra Costa? Solano?, Alameda? (one of them counties anyway) and then slap the battery and various whatnots inside the glider and that’s your “final assembly” in America? I cry foul.
Let’s face it, the Coda Sedan is a Chinese car, whether you like that or not.
“The CODA might be the most agile car you’ve ever driven.”
Nope!
“Do you know the feeling of stomping the pedal and waiting for the car to build speed? Those days are over. The experience of driving a CODA is completely different.”
Well, I know what a Chevy Chevette Diesel automatic is like. It’s slow, with a o-60 time of 20 seconds plus. I know your CODA is quicker than that, but is the experience of driving the thing “completely different” from other cars? Nope.
“It’s small, energy-dense UQM PowerPhase® electric motor packs a punch, and weighs hundreds of pounds less than internal combustion engines.”
How can a motor be “energy-dense?” Shouldn’t you be talking about the energy density of the battery instead? Speaking of which, how much does the battery weigh? Isn’t that the more salient aspect?
“So whether you’re standing still or moving at a good pace, you’ll get instant torque and acceleration when you need it.”
You’re selling an electric car on this basis? Isn’t the CODA slower than the average car being sold today? Yep.
“She was decommissioned in 1995 and as of 2004, she was on loan to the Army, but remained laid up at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. In December 2006, the ship was towed to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where it now has a high-tech role as a launch platform with the nation’s developing ballistic missile defense program. Three times the ship was towed some 100 miles off shore and used to launch small ballistic missiles, which are then intercepted by Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Missiles, test-fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility. The last test in the series was performed 26 October, when the ship fired a “Scud-like” missile, which was successfully intercepted. The ship will be towed back to the San Francisco Bay Area for the winter. Kaua’i lacks a suitable land-based launch site, and the costs of building one would far exceed the approximately $600,000 per year it costs to use the old warship, so the vessel returned to Pearl Harbor for a second series of tests in late spring 2008.[1] As of 16 June 2012 she berthed at Pier 80 in San Francisco, CA.”
From 2008:
Well, look what just got towed in from Hawaii. Fresh from testing of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, San Francisco’s favorite former helicopter carrier, the former U.S.S. Tripoli (LPH-10), had its ups and downs in the Aloha State.
But tell me if I’m wrong, tell me if the final assembly facility in Benicia starts chugging out product all of a sudden ala Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory.
Otherwise, I’m concluding that Coda is dead. It’s not responding to stimuli, anyway.
Get the story here, just keep on clicking back in time to learn about the star-crossed Coda Sedan.
Why did we, the taxpayers, subsidize Coda when it was obvious that it couldn’t succeed?
I don’t know.
Now back in 2007, the electric car we were going to get from China was called the Javlon XS500. It was suppose to come in 2008. It didn’t. Check it:
Miles L. Rubin – Founder and Chairman Emeritus of CODA Automotive; former CEO of Detroit Iron & Steel Industries, Reliance Manufacturing, Puritan Fashions Corp. and Polo Ralph Lauren Jeanswear
Steven “Mac” Heller – Executive Chairman of CODA Automotive; former Goldman Sachs Head of Mergers & Acquisitions, Worldwide and Co-Head of the Investment Banking Division[23]
Tom Steyer – Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman, a San Francisco private equity firm; Founder, Co-Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Farallon Capital; member of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University[23]
Henry “Hank” Paulson - former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs and special representative of the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue[23]
Mack McLarty – (Thomas “Mack” McLarty) Former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, President of McLarty Associates and McLarty Companies, a transportation business based in Little Rock, Arkansas[23]
Kevin Czinger – Senior Strategic Advisor, CODA Automotive; Former President and CEO at CODA Automotive, executive at Global Signal, Webvan Group, Bertelsmann AG, and Goldman Sachs
Board of Directors
Miles L. Rubin – Founder and Chairman Emeritus, CODA Automotive; former CEO of Detroit Iron & Steel Industries, Reliance Manufacturing, Puritan Fashions Corp. and Polo Ralph Lauren Jeanswear
Steven “Mac” Heller – Executive Chairman, CODA Automotive; former Goldman Sachs Head of Mergers & Acquisitions, Worldwide and Co-Head of the Investment Banking Division
Alan Chesick – Acting Legal Advisor of CODA Automotive, former general counsel of Fortress Investment Group
Daniel Weiss – Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Angeleno Group LLC, a leading Los Angeles-based private equity firm focused on high growth investments in the energy sector
John Bryson - Former Chairman, CEO and President of Edison International from 1990 through 2008, a director at The Boeing Company, The Walt Disney Company, and the California Institute of Technology
Niall Davis – One of ten founding partners of Swiss aeris CAPITAL AG, a large global private equity firm
Philip Murtaugh – CEO, CODA Automotive; former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of GM China, EVP International Operations of SAIC
Mack McLarty – (Thomas “Mack” McLarty) Former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, President of McLarty Associates and McLarty Companies, a transportation business based in Little Rock, Arkansas
Dr. Thomas Cardello – Partner of Sunrise Capital, an institutional fund manager, Advisory Director and former MD of Global Electronic Derivative Market making for Morgan Stanley
Dr. Michael Wang – Manager of the Systems Assessment Section of the Center for Transportation Research at Argonne Labs, serves as a senior advisor to the Chinese government on new vehicle technology and alternative energy production
Henry “Hank” Paulson - former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs and special representative of the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue
Thomas F. Steyer – Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman, a San Francisco private equity firm; Founder, Co-Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Farallon Capital; member of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University
Woo C. Lee – Head of Asia for the advisory firm JL Thornton & Company, formerly a U.S. diplomat at American embassies in China, Japan, Australia and Southeast Asia
Thomas R. McDaniel – Director of SunPower Corp., SemGroup, LP, Cypress Envirosystems, and the Senior Care Action Network and Formerly executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer of Edison International
Kevin Czinger – Senior Strategic Advisor, CODA Automotive; Former President and CEO at CODA Automotive, executive at Global Signal, Webvan Group, Bertelsmann AG, and Goldman Sachs
And you certainly won’t find the official Chinese Communist Party (“Socialism, with Chinese Characteristics!”) website on Shen Yun all that easily, oh no:
Cult Studies[Uh, FYI, CCP, your agitprop website looks a little crude, like it's from your little buddy North Korea, just saying.]
So I guess the lesson to be learned is that if a small group of people want to game Google so that you’ll buy tickets to this show without knowing, in a general way, what it’s about first, then they can.
Things I now know:
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE;
THE BOLD ITALIC IS GANNETT COMPANY, INCORPORATED; and
SHEN YUN 2013 IS FALUN GONG
That’s something to consider when you’re getting the hard sell at San Francisco Costco #144, as seen last week on 10th Street:
And check out the crest they’re using – that’s the same one that was on the green blazers of the security guards as they ejected me from the joint on Opening Day a bit more than a year ago. Good times:
I mean, her luxury condo south of Market was only partly subsidized, right? And she doesn’t really have a job job. And I don’t think the Chinese consulate has ever 1099′ed her for the “consulting” work she does / did for it.
So Rose Pak is a guaranteed winner and the “Chinese community” she claims to represent is a guaranteed loser, assuming that advertising works and assuming that The House Always Wins, which is does.
“The Asian Art Museum needs your help. One of our terracotta warriors is lost, and we have to find him before China’s Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor’s Legacy opens on February 22. What we know is this: a small group of terracotta warriors journeyed from their home in China to the museum—but somewhere along the way, this one took a wrong turn and is now missing. He’s 2,112 years old, about 5’ 5” tall, mud-colored, and doesn’t speak English.”
“If you spot him, please post a photo on Twitter, Instagram, or our Facebook wall and tag it with #LOSTWARRIOR so we can track his whereabouts on this map. Even if you don’t have photos, share and tag your tips and leads with #LOSTWARRIOR. Every little bit counts.
REWARD: Those who help may be eligible to win passes to the exhibition. Please spread the word, and thanks! Here’s our director Jay Xu with a personal call to action.
