Chrysler's Trio of Electric Vehicles (from Automobile Magazine)
In the total absence of a regular information stream from the once fairly blabby (back when it was a public corporation) Chrysler, we are left to marvel aloud at the latest round of surprise moves from the now-secretive, privately held carmaker. At a hastily assembled news conference, CEO Bob Nardelli gleefully unleashed on the crowd three electric vehicles from the equivalent of nowhere. It might as well have been rabbits from a silk top hat, the jaded press corps was so stunned.
From stage left came a newly electrified Town & Country minivan and a four-door Jeep Wrangler, each using an electric motor and a lithium-ion battery system as well as a small gasoline engine with an integrated electric generator to extend range from 40 miles in all-electric mode to 400 miles using about eight gallons of gas.
Dodge had its own front-and-center moment: an all-electric, badge-engineered Lotus Europa with a range of 150 to 200 miles based on an eight-hour charge from a 110/120-volt household outlet.
"Chrysler Leaps Into Electric Race" headlined one Detroit newspaper, and "Chrysler Gets Charged Up" was the bold page-one banner on the other. How? and from where? and with whose batteries? were our immediate questions. The answers were not forthcoming, other than that Chrysler was working with Nardelli's old company, General Electric. So mistrustful was our own intrepid reporter, executive editor Joseph DeMatio, that, when Nardelli promised an electric vehicle from Chrysler by 2010, he asked, "Do you mean just one vehicle?" ... Read the Article.
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