Broken Kode

This week I learnt a very clear lesson in what appears to work on Tumblr.

I ‘relaunched’ Broken Kode with an all new number 1 post, around 3 months ago. I decided to keep a razor sharp focus on Tesla news and engineering in general. The model I was trying to on Daring Fireball - not a terribly original idea admittedly but I thought that as time would go on the site would evolve or die based on its own success and failure.

In those 3 months I honestly saw extremely limited traction of people visiting the site, reblogging or liking a post. In fact a total of 3 people actually follow the site - hi guys, thanks for following. Then earlier this week I posted my first image. That single post has generated more action than the entire site has had in the 3 months since the relaunch.

It’s an ‘event’ that I can’t ignore, as clearly I’m not reaching the desired audience on Tumblr - which I know exists. What I’m saying it’s me, not you. Tumblr knows what it is. The users know what they want out of Tumblr; I however thought that I could use the platform in a different way. The platform is clearly suited to a specific kind of content, one which isn’t text heavy.

Coda Automotive filed for bankruptcy.

Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know who they were either. What brought the company to my attention was the fact that their name was mentioned along side both Tesla and Fisker, as an equal in the electric vehicle revolution.

I looked around to try and understand the reasons for the company’s demise. A quick search online and found a picture of its flagship product, the Coda. Yeah, exactly what I thought, pretty damn fugly. Clearly I wasn’t alone as the company sold 100 cars in total.

What amuses me about the comparisons to Tesla, is how misguided and wrong those comparisons actually are. Sure they both make (or in Coda’s case, made) electric cars, but that’s as far as I could see the similarities ending.

People who’ve never seen a Model S in real person, lust after it. Tesla make a single vehicle at the moment. They’ve stopped production on the Roadster and the focus is on a single product. They are focusing on this model and increasing it’s appeal - through continuous initiatives such as it’s leasing programme and expanded supercharger network. Companies like Coda, made 100 lemons.

Fascinating post by James Allen which gives more details on how the Formula E series (debuting in 2014) will address the issue of range for the all EV racing series.

The proposed solution for the limited range the batteries will offer is to have multiple cars per driver, per race. Each race lasts for 1 hour. The first car is used for 20 minutes, a second car is then used for the next 20 minutes, before returning to the first car (where the batteries have been recharged) for the final 20 minutes. The hope that 10 additional minutes are added per year to the range of the vehicles.

Formula 1 is the pinnacle of Motorsport. From this racing series, hundreds of (small and large) innovations have been added to road cars, as the teams fight for a competitive advantage and therefore innovate like crazy. Hopefully the Formula E series can do the same thing for Electric Vehicles and battery technology.