Chrysler bids for ‘green’ dollars

CHRYSLER has put out its hand for a $US224 million ($A278 million) slice of the US energy department’s incentive fund to develop new electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

The embattled US auto-maker submitted proposals that would see it spend a total of $US448m ($A556 million) on a dollar-for-dollar basis, including $US83 million ($A103 million) to build a new technology and manufacturing centre in Michigan to help develop and assemble the vehicles.

This complex is planned to be functional by 2010 and produce more than 20,000 vehicles a year, Chrysler said in a statement.

The balance of the money would be spent producing 365 demonstration vehicles – at $US1 million apiece – for trials by hand-picked “customers and partners”.

Chrysler said this test fleet would consist of 100 Town & Country seven-seat minivans and 100 Dodge Ram pick-up trucks converted to be plug-in hybrids, and a further 165 Town & Country models converted to full electric mode for daily mail service in four regions by the US Postal Service.

These are hardly small city runabouts, though. In petrol form, the Town & Country (sold in Australia as the Grand Voyager) weighs around 2000kg and the Dodge Ram 1500 is described as a “full-size pick-up” that weighs from 2300kg.

Chrysler_Town&Country_lower.jpgLeft: A cutaway of the Chrysler Town & Country plug-in hybrid.

Nevertheless, Chrysler says these are popular models in their respective segments and as PHEVs (plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles) can achieve substantial greenhouse-gas reduction.

It has established more than a dozen partnerships with city and local governments, research and development authorities, utility companies and universities to test the PHEVs.

Chrysler LLC senior vice-president of external affairs and public policy, John Bozzella, said the proposal would enable the production of commercially viable products in a shorter time frame, stimulate the economy and help the company achieve its leadership goals in electrified-vehicle development and production.

“These initiatives represent how government and the automotive industry are answering the challenge of reaching common goals and demonstrate how rapidly this type of advanced technology can be brought to market in a collaborative environment,” said Mr Bozzella.

“Without US innovation and production capacity, we will simply trade batteries for oil in the pursuit of transportation energy.” Just two years ago, when it was still owned by Daimler, Chrysler had the worst fleet fuel consumption figure of the major US auto-makers. It then established an in-house group called ENVI (not an acronym, just the four letters of the word environmental) to develop electric vehicles.

Chrysler revealed four USPS all-electric mail vans on Earth Day in April. They were developed by the ENVI ‘skunkworks’, but the company revealed no technical details.

An earlier Town & Country prototype, though called EV, was a plug-in hybrid with a 200kW petrol engine in addition to a 70kW electric motor. This vehicle travels only 65km exclusively on electric power, or up to 650km with a combination of electric and petrol power.

Chrysler executive vice president for product development Frank Klegon said the ENVI electric minivan concepts illustrate the company’s innovation with electric vehicle technology and showed what the future could hold.

“These proposals present a win-win situation for Chrysler and, most importantly, our customers,” said Mr Klegon.

“This plan will accelerate our efforts to develop and manufacture electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which will reduce the amount of time it will take to get these vehicles on the road.”