Finally I Can Drive Our Coda EV Barn Find! Putting The Very First Miles On Our Free Electric Car
70 M hour a small wobble coming 75 M an hour now W we’re almost keeping up with the cross trck 78 mil an hour We’re burying the speedometer 80 mph take a look here over 80 this video is brought to you by star charge the largest EV charging
Manufacturer in the world they are also a provider of residential and Commercial battery storage with micro grid Solutions this video is also brought to you by chemp power the reliable quick and scalable EV charging solution for everyone and everywhere hello and welcome to another out of spec reviews
Video you joined me back again with the Koda electric and I finally have the license plates to put on this thing so we can put the first few miles on our bar and find 2012 electric coat I’m going to walk you through the full story of this car everything that’s
Happened how we ended up with it for the hardcore viewers you’ll know the story on this one where it sat for over 10 years in San Jose California at DG DG’s vehicle lot um I’m just so thrilled that we got the title we have the license
Plates it’s an amazing story and in this video we are going to take it on a drive for the first time so let’s go have some fun with our 2012 Kota EV for friends who have a good memory you’ll remember that last summer we got a call from my friend Nick George at
Dgdg and he said hey Kyle we found a Kota EV in the back of our parking lot that like no one knew what was doing there and we we basically went over to check it out and the story was that Del Grande dealer group dgdg used to own the
Kota of Silicon Valley franchise and this was one of the vehicles that was delivered to Cotto of Silicon Valley to eventually be sold one day down the line and uh forgive the strap job here this is all not proper or anything like that I just had it on here so it didn’t fall
Off the trailer in front of my house um but essentially the original dealer group went out of business so did Kota they only delivered 150 160 of these and this one is number Vin 84 there’s another plate that says number 33 inside of theota right in there it shows number 33 of
500 um so you know pretty interesting car to say the least and and honestly it was looking in bad shape when we found it the paint was completely mangled the tires had melted into the pavement and I said this would be a fun project to share with our audience the only problem
Was they had no keys for it and they did not have the title for the vehicle and so we went back for the second video and we found the keys and we actually started it up and after over 10 years of sitting the 12vt battery was low of
Course but we jumped the 12vt it still had 30% state of charge in the high voltage battery which is a roughly 33 or 36 KW lfp lithium iron phosphate battery pack with which has great cycle life and great longevity very similar to the new Bas Tesla battery pack that’s in the new
Model 3 standard range lfp and I was just thrilled I was like amazing and then even crazier than that my friend Nick said DG DG I loved the video so much that we did they will just give out of speec the Koda as long as
Long as we share the story of the car and everything with you which of course that’s what we’re here to do tell stories of cars and uh we towed it back here to Colorado it went to Colton’s shop and it’s halfway through a paint restoration it’s been compounded but not
Polished it actually looks amazing it’s a little dirty and dusty at the moment but underneath other than little spots like this right here the paint is coming back almost to new the only issue really is the roof that has damage Beyond repair so we will either repaint or just
Wrap the roof black but down the side of the car it looks brand new again this was all faded completely destroyed and Colton has been bringing this car back to life the interior it almost looked like someone died on the inside is back to brand new again really interesting to
See the inside the seats have almost swelled a little bit maybe even in the heat but I got to say it it’s looking great that door piece is really the only issue same thing here with the center console missing the navigation display in there and my friend Robert from aging
Wheels has another one of these speaking of interesting things about the Kota uh we just found out that Mullen who purchased Kota I think in 2012 or maybe even after uh is actually selling off their entire parts of kotas and one of the ideas I had with Robert was why
Don’t we just buy all of the remaining Kota parts I mean they have like 10 Motors 100 windshields just crazy parts and we’ll just give them away to Kota owners who need parts to keep these vehicles on the road for time to come now it’s a huge project it’s probably
Going to be a lot of money I don’t know if we’ll do it or not but at least Robert went over there to take a look at the inventory and uh perhaps there’s something there perhaps not but I don’t know how much I want to go down that
Path here but at least it is interesting that Mullen is selling off all of their Koda stuff I think they have 11 brand new zero mile kodas as part of that as well which would be a really interesting thing so let’s get the story moved on
I’ll tell you how we got the title and eventually the license so that is the story up to this moment so how did we endend up getting the license plates and everything for theota well the problem was that Del Grande dealer group no longer owned Kota of Silicon Valley they
Went out of business over 10 years ago I think 12 years ago they went out of business something like that so here’s a car that had never been retail sold right so there was never an original title issued for the vehicle and Del Grande dealer group had the car but did
Not have the franchise to retail a coda so um Del Grande dealer group dgdg called up California DMV submitted a whole bunch of forms and paperwork and we thought this was going to be a bonding process a 2-year long threeyear long back and forth of arguing and I
Have to say in only about 6 months California DMV said yep thank you for the statement of fact thank you for everything we will sell the car or we will issue a title to Capital Volkswagen in San Jose and so capital wagen assumed ownership of theota and they have sent
Over all the paperwork here just this week to Colorado and have transferred it and sold it to out ofpc and now we have aota they didn’t even charge me sales tax for it lur County because I literally didn’t pay anything I said I paid $1 in the video but I actually never
Even gave them the $1 so they didn’t charge me anything which is great so it’s a free Koda and I’m so excited to share the video now of course I’m spending thousands of dollars on the paint restoration with Colton his services are not cheap and we’re really
Trying to get it back into life I’ve put brand new nokki and tires on it again we’re really restoring it so there is money going into it but I have the license plates we should come up with a fun customized plate so if you have a
Good plate idea let me know I was thinking either DG DG as a uh you know paying tribute to Del Grande dealer group who gave us this car or maybe 399 it was Colton’s idea or even just something as basic as Kota EV because it’s really a car that no one knows what
It is but let me know your comments below what we’re going to do is unhook the Koda from the trailer I have to hook the rivan up so the trailer just doesn’t go to the sky so we’ll hook the rivan up to the trailer we’ll back the Kota off
And then we’re going to go for the first official Drive Legal Drive of Dakota if you remember in the previous video we drove it around the block on a dealer plate and it drove great but really since then we’ve put no miles in I think
I picked it up with 50 or 51 miles and I think it has 57 miles on it now just around the block little things like that but we’re going to go for an official drive for the first time in this car’s life we’re g to get the diffs warm get
The bearings running all of those things it’s really really fun so let’s do it hey Alysa how’s it going great you excited so excited yeah thanks for helping getting the car unloaded I’ve got the ramps down we’re not we’re going to leave the trailer here so I’ve just
Hooked up the uh connection point so the trailer doesn’t go to the sky when we back this thing off and then we’re going to take this for a ride yeah let’s go so it’s time it’s unhooked ready to pull it off the trailer I have the keys
One incredible thing about this car is the 12volt battery is over 10 years old it’s definitely dying but what’s crazy is once it’s charged up it holds its charge for a while so I think the 12volt battery should be okay and once the high voltage battery is active of course it
Uses a DC to DC to charge the 12vt I definitely need to put a new 12 Vol battery in this though um it’s over 10 years old it’s reached the end of its life but it’s amazing that sometimes it still holds a charge I’m not sure about
Right now though I’m not getting the flashing on the uh on the lights let’s see if it’s dead we’ll have to put a jump box on it oh I think it is working you can see my light up Koda here very nicely going in we go key on ready
Flashing and the car is active let me show the viewers here if you don’t mind take a look guys you can see 57.5 miles on the odometer we’re at 70% state of charge it does have some Phantom drain but that’s it charging up the 12volt battery and now that we have
The license plates and insurance and everything on the car I’m actually going to full charge and cycle it and just show the BMS what’s up once we get that we get everything broken in maybe a couple hundred miles on it we’re going to go for a range test and ultimately
See how much energy capacity we think the Kota has lost by sitting it’s a really unique use case so let’s back her down did you already square up no I have not just make sure we’re good I got as close as I could get that’ll
Do looking good yep I’ll get up a little bit closer looking good still on that side too yep And theota is off for hopefully the last time amazing I’m going to put it in the driveway let’s get the license plates on it and then let’s take it for a drive so I’ve left theota on just uh as we closed up the trailer here just to keep the
High voltage battery active get everything running and I have climate control off in the vehicle but I’m actually hearing the battery cooling fans running pretty loudly so I wonder what’s going on it’s definitely doing I’ve never seen theota do that behavior um I’m actually going to take my uh charger
Here my evse it’s not technically a charger and plug it in and see if it actually works so let’s shut her off we’re at 70% we’ll shut her off leave the keys in it I’ve got a long extension cord here and then we’ll plug it into the Koda and
Juice it up before we head out so weirdly my wall connector will not charge the Koda even with the adapter so there’s some weird communication thing going between the uh Tesla stuff and the uh adapter here so that’s at least good to know don’t show up here dead I can at
Least charge it on the 110 outlet and it charges fine at culton shop on the uh altel EVS that we have over there so I definitely know the BMS totally isn’t calibrated cuz I was watching when I first started it the state of charge kind of wobble around there a little bit
It was like 65 68 70 blah blah blah blah blah and there it just is like giving up on charging there so okay well we’ll charge it when we get to Colton’s up to 100 now we can drive it so the only thing I don’t have here are the screws
For the license plate so I’m going to just put the plate in the back window for now I think it should be okay and then we’ll get some codes wo full send look at that guy ripping setting a new lap record even getting on some tire squeal around there the Kia club Kia
Boys at it again so all right I’ll put the license plate in the back window and then we’ll hit the road well you join us in theota now so let’s go headlights on let’s go climate control on AC off we don’t need that we’ll put it to
Warmish see if the climate control works face and feet fan on number one we’ve had everything sort of decontaminated out of this whole car so it feels pretty fresh smells great now I would say what do you think Alysa yeah does doesn’t bother me yeah better than the eolf that’s for sure well
Yeah so we’ll put the oh this is so funny can I show the viewers this this is amazing normally with these switches on the side to adjust your gauge brightness you go up to make them brighter and down to make them dimmer but here it’s the exact opposite it’s
Down for bright and up for dim so you’re increasing the level of Di dimness not the level of brightness that’s pretty funny so in the we are in Drive handbrake off first few legal inches in theota oh yes pulling out of the driveway oh no someone’s
Coming we’re not that fast yeah okay and here we go definitely a ton of motor cogging at low speed and we are off does this have new tires brand new noan tires one all season okay thanks for sponsoring though they didn’t sponsor this video but they gave us the tires so thanks
No no horn doesn’t even feel like there would be a a place for a horn and it’s legal we’re driving the Kota on the streets at rush hour take a look ahead this is amazing so this is 25 mil an hour feeling fine I I hope we
Have enough range to make it to culton it shows 70% % now originally this vehicle was rated for 88 M of EPA range I think and it was really inefficient like I think it definitely did better in real life uh than what it stated online
So we’re just going to go nice and slow let everything come up to temperature just be gentle on it we’ll cruise over to Colton’s and then um yeah that’ll be that he’ll finish up the paint restoration get this thing ceramic coated it’ll look great we’re regening right now we’re in the green
Regening wow oh this is amazing the braking yeah it’s got brakes this is next level all right let’s pull out here don’t die on us now kot wow great you know and I’ve heard of kod is reaching over 100,000 miles Alyssa yeah I saw one that had 300,000
Mil on it believe it or not wow I don’t know if we should it would just what it indicated but that would be a lot of miles so just cruising in it now it feels totally normal doesn’t it yeah it just feels like a normal Alibaba car
Yeah it it definitely is like an NPC car or like you know the most if you if you just wanted to describe a car to someone this would be it it’s like Grand Theft Auto car yeah very very basic Transportation but it’s electric and it
Was Paving the way at the time and I’m so glad that it’s working the even with the vent on one it’s really really producing a lot of uh a lot of fan here let’s just crank up the heater not not quite to Max but pretty high up there
We’ve already lost a couple percent on the display I can see and we’ve added one mile to the odometer wow I’m going to be driving this thing a lot it’s got 58 and a half miles on it now um you know I want to break it in get it going
Do a range test and just use it and enjoy it and uh you know that’s about it I’m not sure enjoying it will really be the time it’s not like an enjoyable car car but it’s kind of fun and Nifty and a cool story and you know if we just need to bomb
Around town this is a great option for sure and it’s got you know 33 kwatt hours something like that when new nothing to nothing nothing to sniff at any final comments Alyssa I just never heard of somebody say nothing to sniff at oh okay yeah nothing to scoff
At nothing to sniff at I guess nothing to sniff at no sniffing here it smells good in here now no longer feels like someone died in the inside everything’s been clean detailed twice twice twice cuz it was but done by that guy CU Colton wouldn’t even touch
It and then Colton got it afterwards look at the regen on this thing coming in it’s an lfp battery pack test some of the handling characteristics who and we’re just being very gentle on it feels like it’s got plenty of power look at that 35 mph cruising wow see on the
Highway we have have been cruising at about 45 mph top speed so far and it’s felt safe enough Alyssa don’t you think to jump on the highway I guess yeah there’s no option now yeah we’re committed uh the speedometer only goes to 80 mph which is confidence inspiring
So speed limits here are 75 yeah we’ll we’ll be hanging in the right the motor cogging at low speed is just a little jar and goesa who and you’re like is it going to stall or is it going to make it but here we are merging onto the highway
Gentle throttle not going wide open I have floored this car before it’s been fine but I don’t want to Brick it or anything especially with the battery not being fully charged suspension’s comfortable almost feels like the front and rear are tuned completely differently oh we have a low tire
Pressure warning light coming on the dashboard but if that’s our only warning light we’re doing okay straight listen to the noise 65 M an hour wow should we go for top speed yeah okay that’s Full Throttle 70 M hour a small wobble coming 75 M an hour now whoa
We’re almost keeping up with the cross trck 78 mil an hour We’re burying the speedometer 80 M an hour take a look here over 80 I’m wide open whoa we got a zap icon on the display which means there’s a high voltage issue that usually means you have to
Plug it in you’ve reached bottom voltage it could be typically I’ve heard that comes on at about 30% but it could be that we just drained a lot of the battery and so there was some voltage sag let’s just keep it gentle yeah let’s play a little safe here yeah so we’ll
Just go you know 65 or 70 over to Colton and uh plug it in charge it up to 100 balance the BMS because it could be thinking that it’s at 30% even though it’s showing an indicated 57% at the moment or so but it’s feeling great it’s tracking straight some vibrations
Nothing major but I can’t imagine this drove great on day one anyway I mean this car really started out at a low bar of acceptability so but we’re just cruising at 70 really feels smooth the motor sounds good nice high pitched wine and we’re going in theota good
Headlights I got to say good headlights this is amazing well we have made it to our highway exit I’ve just been cruising between 65 and 70 mph it’s been great we’re going to do a big long hit of regen as we come off the highway ramp here we’re at 50% state of charge
Indicated again I’m not sure why the high voltage zap icon is on now that usually means you have to charge is my understanding so again BMS could be out of whack but the car’s been d driving fine the state of charge has been decreasing linearly it’s been very nice
We’re coming off coming through some roundabouts to test the high performance characteristic of the car I would say yeah I mean for based off the my my friend Luke who actually works for Porsche uh reviewed this car originally I forget for what website but he and I
Had a fun laugh about kotas and um he basically said that this thing drove like crap on day one and I would say this drives it’s got really light steering no feel no connection but it doesn’t it it doesn’t seem to me like anything’s been deteriorated over it’s
10 or 12 years of sitting my my impression overall is that this probably drives just as bad as it did on day one and it’s really you know I I guess my expectations were a lot lower for this vehicle it’s really nice it’s relatively quiet it’s comfortable there was very
Little wind noise on the highway um the only thing you do get is about 65 mph to 70 is a loud resonance from the electric motor so you have a lot of electrical noise coming from up front but if you go faster than 70 or below 65 it’s pretty
Much dead silent um the heater is not working in this particular one uh and that could just come with time that might come but look the zap icon’s gone away Alyssa wow it seems to be happy now so I’m not sure need a little shake and
Bake yeah if there’s any the old Italian tuna but if any uh Koda owners know what that zap icon means let me know I’m pretty sure it means just wants to be charged some rattles coming yeah they’ll come in with more miles and I can’t believe it has tire pressure uh
Monitoring system I’m sure Those sensors are all gone which is why this light’s popped up but we’ll double check the pressures before the next drive but I I’m really impressed I have to say it’s the seat’s fairly hard it’s almost like it’s just you know never been sat in
Before so it needs to be broken in a little bit and I think that’s going to be the case with this car the more we drive it maybe the better it’ll get that happens a lot with vehicles where if they sit they kind of get you know stiff
And balded up and not that great but if you drive it and they loosen up they feel great so I’m going to be driving this thing this week my eolf is currently broken actually time and put the new suspension on it but it’s too low and there’s an issue with the axle
After the installs so we have new axle coming uh and the suspension’s got to get dialed so this is going to be my around town daily for the week which it’s actually not going to be because we’re dropping it off at Colton’s for the paint restoration yeah I just got excited for nothing
Gosh so anyway it’s going to get dialed in the paint’s going to come back to New we’ll wrap the roof black and then I can drive theota and uh I can’t say I’m going to drive this thing all that often or everywhere I much prefer my eolf to
This plus there’s so many eglfs on the road I feel like I can do anything to that car and trash it and no one’s going to Care this is still one of the few surviving kotas especially with this little mileage on it in the world and um
Yeah I think it’s something we’ll just take out every once in a while what do you think just to make sure she’s still alive that’s right but it’s it’s truly wonderful it’s really great and uh yeah let’s go bring it into coltons I’m so happy we have this car registered titled in our
Name wow I need to get a new head unit for it I need to get this door panel reglued or maybe just a new door panel in general and then she’ll be ready to rock and roll well we have a big regen hit on the
Way down I have to say the car has been driving great amazing over all the bumps I can feel even the suspension changing its character as it’s getting broken in and moved uh and warmed up it’s almost like the dampers are they’re probably shot after 10 years I would think I
Don’t know but it’s really not bad the braking performance has been wonderful steering oh yeah great F1 handling here and highbeam test oh wow you you pull it back for high beams and then you pull it back again to shut them off you don’t push them forwards that’s pretty wild I
Still have not figured out where the hor is there’s the the wipers but we’re arriving at Colton’s so let’s go put it in the garage I think what we’re actually going to do is we’re not going to full charge it now since he’s going to be working on it for the week we’re
At 45% state of charge he’ll be working on it for the week but before we take it back to the uh to the office we’ll probably leave this one at we will full charge it then and then balance the back batter a little bit so access granted here we are pulling
In I need to order a new 12volt battery for it and that’s kind of it yeah we’ll get the screen the door but I can live without those I think uh I just want to make sure it’s got a new 12vt so it doesn’t die on us wherever we
Go but dang look at it in the reflection if you look to the right here it’s a good looking car look at that thing nice it’s got LED tail lights LED running lights H hallogen headlights of course there’s a Colton’s id4 sitting here we’re actually going to go test
Plugin charge on this one because 2023 has got upgraded so next video coming soon a little Creek from the steering rack but nothing to be worried about I don’t think and boom p handre on in the park I know why Colton didn’t answer his
Phone I wanted him to get a video of Us coming in but um he’s jamming out in there I can hear the Basse thumping yeah so let me give you my final thoughts and then we’ll end this video Welcome to the clear detailing shop and uh for those of you who have
Not checked out Colton’s out ofec detailing video this is the eolf the cheap eglf is now slammed it does need to come up just a little bit and it’s been changed in color to Verde Solaris by kpmf just wrapped it this color and I just can’t believe this is is the same
Car that Alyssa and I picked up not too long ago that was completely trashed no more warning lights completely new suspension every bushing every every bearing replaced it’s got the rotaform CCV Wheels is it Colton yes sir yeah nice and uh we’ve done some ozone treatments to the interior with that
Machine over there and the smoke smells coming back I mean really saving this one from Near Death 125,000 mil on it still just awesome we got the doggos over here Charlie and Stella but um Yeah Colton’s wiring up a new vacuum cleaner yes sir so that’s cool he’s got the Ryobi
Tools yeah we’re Ryobi fans over here if you’re just doing home stuff that’s awesome the twizzy still here doing great uh this is sort of artwork more than anything but it still runs it charges fine it’s sitting at about 30% state of charge for storage I did a
Degradation test on this actually it’s only lost one kilowatt hour but when you’re starting with six okay it’s actually pretty significant so here’s the coda out here and uh what a machine can’t believe we got the thing registered titled we can use it I can’t wait to get it when the roof is
Corrected it’s going to look almost brand new at that point and yeah what an awesome time driving it over here really drives great drives great um really impressed so there you go theota is alive it’s doing well more updates to come we’ll do a range test and a
Degradation test in the near future as soon as we can and I can’t thank you guys enough for watching this out of speec reviews video see you on another one again soon bye-bye
The Coda is alive and well! Midway through the @OutofSpecDetailing restoration, the title showed up in the mail from @DGDGCars. We had to pull it out, get it inspected, and ready for the road! Join us on our first official drive of the Coda EV as we cruise on city streets and highway putting the very first miles on this 12 year old EV.
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