Coda's first store, located in the Westfield Century City Shopping Center in Los Angeles County.

Something is going on at Coda Automotive, the California-based upstart electric car company with the plain-looking sedan. After a period of relative quiet in the spring and summer, the company has issued a string of announcements in recent weeks showing tangible steps toward its promise of delivering its first units before the end of 2011. The company has slipped on previous dates for delivery, but now there’s evidence the pieces are coming together.

• This week, Coda said it completed a Series D preferred investment round, totaling $147 million, bringing the company's total funding raised to more than $300 million.
• Earlier this month, Coda and Amports—its assembly/processing partner—announced Monday that it closed a deal to open a final assembly plant in Benicia, Calif. Coda will ship nearly finished cars from China to the Port of Oakland, and then truck the models to Benicia, where Coda’s batteries and other components will be installed. (Benicia is about 50 miles from where Tesla Motors will assemble the Model S, in Fremont, Calif.)
• Also in early September, Coda announced the opening of its first consumer store, located in the Westfield Century City Shopping Center in Los Angeles County. The 900 square foot space—which uses eco-friendly building materials—features an interactive educational area that communicates the benefits of electric cars. Customers will be able to take a test drive of the EV in the parking garage below the store.

As a new brand on the American scene, Coda will face a tough challenge to sell its EV at $44,9000 (before federal incentives). The company emphasizes a few key advantages over the current leader, the $32,000 Nissan LEAF: a larger battery pack for longer driving range; an active thermal management system to more effectively manage the batteries; a quicker 6.6 kW on-board charger; and a body design that has a trunk. Coda executives expect about half its sales to be through fleets.

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times’s Susan Carpenter took a preproduction version of the Coda electric sedan for a spin—one of the rare media reviews of the model. (The final production version has not yet been made available to journalists.) Carpenter wrote that it “isn't quite as refined as the Nissan LEAF, but it's about 90% of the way there. Its ride and finish are at least on par with better-known independent EV manufacturers including Tesla Motors.” She expects the production model to have a quicker pedal response, and steering that is “dialed in a bit better.” When reaching the model’s top speed of 85 miles per hour, Carpenter wrote, “the Coda felt solid, stable and, for the most part, quiet.”