Kevin Czinger might just be the toughest executive in L.A.’s business world. The chief executive of startup Santa Monica electric-car maker Coda Automotive is something of a legend at his alma mater, Yale University, where he was a star defensive player for the football team. At just 185 pounds, Czinger has been described by Hall of Fame coach Carm Cozza as “the toughest kid to play football at Yale” in his three decades of coaching. Rather than shoot for the pros, however, Czinger, 51, decided his future was in the business world. After getting a law degree and briefly practicing the profession, he went to Wall Street, where he worked on international business deals at Goldman Sachs. He later joined a Silicon Valley venture capital firm before taking a job three years ago as chief executive of Coda, a spinoff from Miles Electric Vehicles, which imports small fleet vehicles from China. Czinger spends a good portion of his time these days in China, where Coda is working with partners to bring the first all-electric sedan that can go 100 miles on a single charge to the U.S. market by the end of the year. A hot rodder in his youth who now rides a bike to work, Czinger recently sat down with the Business Journal in Coda’s Santa Monica offices to discuss his love of cars, his brief but distinguished football career and why Coda has a chance against the big automakers.
Question: Have you always been a car guy?
Answer: Sure. As a kid I’d draw all these cars with crayons or pencils. I love fast cars. I love building stuff. I had two older brothers. We repaired cars, built cars, raced cars. Twice we had a car that won the spring nationals.
The spring nationals?
The car we legitimately drag-raced was a ’67 Barracuda. It was a 440 wedge automatic. It raced in super stock automatic, which we would race at primarily Dragway 42 in Ohio. We had a street-racing car, which was a ’66 Chevelle with a big block motor that was set back and had all the interior sound deadening ripped out of it. That was a car that we could drive out and drive to the Manners Big Boy (restaurant). There was one where everybody that was going to race would go to on Friday and Saturday nights. You’d bet $50 or $100 or so.
A gearhead like yourself must be a bit nostalgic for the days when you could rebuild an engine and race your buddies on the weekend.
We have to lose the nostalgia. The gas combustion engine needs to go the way of the horse era, I hate to say it. The longer we keep our nostalgia for it, the more that we’re going to have our lunch eaten by China and other people.
What kind of car do you drive today?
That bike back there. I live about seven miles away. I ride my bike from there and I ride my bike home.
Every day?
When I don’t do that, I drive a preproduction Coda. To be honest, I ride my bike almost every day.
Other than your car, when will we see the Coda Sedans out on the streets?
You’re going to start seeing test drives in October. Then, our first cars are going to be delivered to people in December of this year.
How is this different from what other companies have promised?
Our car is the first real, usable car that’s all electric and that provides the minimum necessary range that people need for their normal driving activities: getting up in the morning, unplugging, taking the kids to school, commuting, coming home, getting a loaf of bread, picking their son up from soccer, etc. Plus you get that range in the heat of summer or the cold of winter, and to recharge your car conveniently back in your garage.
One hundred miles is fine for those activities, but wouldn’t a buyer still need another car to go outside the city?
This is not going to be a car that allows me to go to Tahoe on the weekend. We look at this as a new technology introduction, not a new car model introduction. The early adopters, to me, are going to be people who are fairly affluent, have two or three cars, and this car is going to be their day-to-day commuter car.
The company had considered building a final assembly plant in Los Angeles, but recently announced that it would be located in Northern California. What happened?
The package that was put together (here) was just not attractive enough financially. We would have loved to stay here, and we’re still talking to the city about doing things because we’d love to be here and create more jobs here. I had to go to China initially to build batteries. I would have rather built a battery plant in Long Beach. But you know what? I’m an entrepreneur, not a dreamer.
How did you end up in this industry?
I originally looked at the electric-car business back in 2000 when I was at Benchmark Capital. I was an entrepreneur-in-residence up in Silicon Valley. Here, there was a company called Miles Electric Vehicles that was importing city electric cars. That got me to intellectually look at and analyze what this space is and how you might be able to create a company around it. I talked to (founder) Miles Rubin first in December 2007.
What’s it like building a startup car company?
Hiring people, creating organizational structures, raising hundreds of millions of dollars of capital, creating a new company. One hundred percent of these people I’ve hired, here and in China. I had to go to China and enter into these agreements with the Chinese government, get approval all the way up to the state council level of the Chinese government, execute on all of those deals and build a facility. We’ve probably got about 85 (employees) here and about 35 in China, mainly engineers.
Doing business in China can be a daunting prospect. Did you have any prior experience?
My experience in China goes back 20 years or so. Back when I was at Goldman Sachs, along with Hank Paulson and John Thornton, I was the junior guy working with them in part on China to work to set up Chinese companies to become future public companies, at a very early stage. In that period, neither Hank nor John was at the top of Goldman. Ten years later they were the CEO and president of Goldman, respectively
Do you keep in touch often with Paulson?
I talked to him about a week and a half ago. Hank is on our board of advisers and is an investor in the company. Jon’s on the board of Ford Motor Co. right now, so he couldn’t get involved in this.
Paulson, of course, was the secretary of the Treasury during the financial crisis. Did you talk to him during that period?
Oh no, he was way too busy. No. That’s like, say, “Did I speak to somebody who was leading troops into the Battle of the Bulge?”
Have you gained any additional insight into the causes of the crisis?
I don’t ask him about that, honestly.
How often do you go to China now?
Well, tonight will be my 32nd round trip in three years. I leave tonight at 1:40 a.m.
That kind of travel must be tough.
It’s totally brutal. It’s inhuman.
How does your family feel about all the traveling?
It’s absolutely insane, but they think it’s a good thing to try to get something done here. For better or worse, my kids look up to me. Their thing is “This is cool, we’re giving you total support, but when you get home, you better put your game face on and be happy and upbeat and energetic.”
How is your Chinese?
I speak basic Mandarin and I know about 2,000 characters. I taught myself over the last five or so years. And I’m totally fluent in German.
How difficult is it to work with Chinese authorities?
I’m glad I did this at this point in my life because at 51, I’m still young enough that I have my energy and durability and physical strength.
Speaking of physical strength, you were cited by your coach Carm Cozza in his book “True Blue” as “the toughest kid to play football at Yale in my 32 years as head coach.” What do you think made him say this?
I don’t know. I was a very good football player. When I stepped out on the field, I played all out every play. I played middle linebacker and middle guard. I was maybe 5’10” and 185 pounds.
Really? The guys who typically played those positions in those days weighed about 250 pounds. You don’t exactly look the part.
No, but I was the Ivy League player of the year, I was the ECAC player of the year – along with Joe Morris, who was later an All-Pro professional football player – New England player of the year. I played on a team where my junior year we had the No. 1 overall defense in the country as a Division I team.
Yeah, the school had a strong program at the time.
A friend of mine who played linebacker with me, Jeff Rohrer, later started in the ’80s as the middle linebacker for the Cowboys. I have another friend, John Spagnola, who was the All-Pro tight end for the Eagles and for the Seahawks; Kenny Hill, who was our tailback, was an All-Pro strong safety for the Raiders and for the Giants.
At your size, you must have been pretty strong to hang with those big boys.
I have a college photo where John Spagnola and the guy who was our tailback, I bet them $100 – which was a lot at the time – that both of them could get on my back and I could walk all the way around the Yale cross-campus library, which is maybe a quarter-mile, which I did. I was strong and fast.
Why didn’t you play professionally?
I had teams where I could have tried out. I probably would have been a special teams player, or would have tried to move over and be a strong safety or something. But I’m a very intellectual person and at that time, I was putting on a helmet and running around hurting people. I was like, “Nah; what do you do in this world?” I was a very good athlete and that got me a bunch of attention. But I was always like, “Hey, going out and hurting people can’t be the end-all of what I’m doing in this life, even if America loves it and they pay people to do this.”
What do you mean you’re an intellectual person?
Growing up, a lot of my life was in my mind because I was in a very working-class family who had no interest in any of the things I had. And we had no money. So I was spending a lot of time at the local, thank-God-for-Carnegie-financing-all-of-these public libraries in Cleveland. I had a very classical Latin, Greek education within one of these old-time Jesuit schools.
What did that education leave you with?
You’re looking at the combination of that feeling that you need to do something good in the world, with the classical Greek ethos, which was basically you are given a set of talents and the life that is well-lived is a life in which you can direct those talents in a way that allows them to blossom the most and does something excellently and effectively. So you have those two combinations in your head, and you’re trying to figure out what the hell is the playing field for.
A car company is the way to do that?
Today is a pivotal period in the country’s history, when we’re either going to find a sustainable way to build cars to transport ourselves, to power those cars, or we’re going to be heading for an economic and environmental train wreck.
Why is that?
We now have foreign-built cars that use foreign oil and every time somebody buys one of those, we’re basically shipping money and jobs overseas. America was the largest oil producer in the world until the 1970s. We went from no importing of oil, to 70 percent of our oil coming from foreign sources between 1970 and 2010. We’ve gone from fighting zero wars over oil to basically our entire national spirit and attention is focused on sending soldiers overseas and fighting wars.
What do you do when you’re not considering such weighty matters?
Read books with my family, go for hikes with my family, skateboard, I Boogie board, body surf – my son’s a big surfer – mountain bike, road bike – almost all of it I try to do with my family. They’re the most important thing in my life.
How old are your children?
My son, Lukas, he’s 16. He’s a junior at Harvard-Westlake. My daughter, Antonia, is 19. She’s a sophomore at Yale.
Yale, huh? Do you think your kids will follow in your footsteps?
I don’t know. They’re great. They’ll find something to do.
How did you meet your wife?
I was walking into my first class in my third year of law school. It was called Limits on the Foreign Affairs Power of the Executive Branch.
Good memory.
Katrina was a visiting scholar and we both walked in and were assigned these seats, and I saw this very attractive blond woman next to me. I looked at her and she looked at me. (Professor) Harold Koh turned to me as I was walking out next to this woman and looking at her, and said, “Well, Kevin, I guess you’re not going to be doing any studying this semester.” This woman and I looked at each other and started laughing. We went out and had a coffee, and got married like 10 months later.
You’re a successful guy. Any words of advice?
You stick your foot in the door and let it get slammed 40 times and the 41st time they forget to slam it and you come in.
You’re talking about persistence.
In “The Iliad,” they say in everyone’s life there are two pots: one pot is good luck and one pot is bad luck. Everyone usually has some mixture of those two. Some people have more good luck or more bad luck; some people only have bad luck; nobody only has good luck. You’re going to always say I’m ahead if I’ve gone five steps forward and four steps backward. Then you’re a winner. I couldn’t have done this company without lots and lots of previous experience – some successes, a bunch of failures.
Kevin Czinger
TITLE: Chief executive
COMPANY: Coda Automotive Inc.
BORN: Cleveland; 1959
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s and J.D., Yale University.
CAREER TURNING POINT: “Every week at this business.”
MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE: Former Goldman Sachs President John Thornton; record executive Clive Calder; insurance executive William Berkley; attorney Arthur Liman.
PERSONAL: Lives in Brentwood with his wife, Katrina, and son, Lukas; has a daughter, Antonia, in college.
ACTIVITIES: Reading, biking, hiking, body boarding, body surfing, skateboarding.
