The ENVI line can be seen here. This is rather sad really, I like electric cars. I drive one myself. From Reuters:
Chrysler dismantles electric car plans under Fiat
DETROIT (Reuters) – Chrysler has disbanded a team of engineers dedicated to rushing a range of electric vehicles to showrooms and dropped ambitious sales targets for battery-powered cars set as it was sliding toward bankruptcy and seeking government aid.
The move by Fiat SpA marks a major reversal for Chrysler, which had used its electric car program as part of the case for a $12.5 billion federal aid package.
As late as August, Chrysler took $70 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a test fleet of 220 hybrid pickup trucks and minivans, vehicles now scrapped in the sweeping turnaround plan for Chrysler announced this week by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne.
Chrysler spokesman Nick Cappa said on Friday that an in-house team of electric car development engineers had been disbanded in favor of a more traditional organization.
The automaker’s former owner, Cerberus Capital Management, had set up a special division called “Envi” — derived from Environment — to spearhead development of hybrid technology where Chrysler badly trailed competitors.
“Envi is absorbed into the normal vehicle development program,” Cappa told Reuters.
Under mounting pressure to improve the fuel-efficiency of its line-up, Chrysler announced in September last year that it was developing three electric vehicles and would sell the first of the models by 2010.
In January at the Detroit Auto Show, Chrysler upped the ante on its electric car bet by pledging to have 500,000 battery-powered vehicles on the road by 2013, including sports cars and trucks.
But a presentation of Chrysler’s five-year strategy by Marchionne on Wednesday made no mention of Chrysler’s earlier electric car development plans.
Under the Marchionne plan, former Envi chief Lou Rhodes will become the group line executive in charge of electric car development for both Fiat and Chrysler, Cappa said.
As of Friday, the Chrysler Group website still featured pictures and advertisements for the now-scuttled electric vehicles it had been developing.
Here: https://www.chryslergroupllc.com/innovation/envi
That includes the Dodge Circuit, a two-seat, all-electric sports car that Chrysler engineers had rushed into prototype by using a Lotus platform.
At the time of the launch of Envi in late 2007, Chrysler executives had said the unit would operate with the speed of a venture capital-backed start-up that would compress the three-to-five-year development cycle typical for automakers.
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Bill, it is called an RTG, radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Uses Pu238. They are used in satellites and Mars Rovers. You don’t want to know how much they cost.
If you want to live dangerously, try a car fitted with the Sodium/Sulphur battery. Yes, MOLTEN Sodium was involved. Try a rear ender with that or try running off the road into a river. And yes, if it was not left on charge, it could take two days to bring up to operating temperature. I think only one was produced – not sure what the drivers thought.
This was just vaporware – these were nothing but concepts.
Not to mention that Chrysler is going to be dismantled, and all that is going to be left within a year is a bunch of imported Fiats with Chrysler name plates.
Retired BChe (17:06:37) :
“I CAN REMEMBER THAT, DECADES AGO, CHRYSLER EXPERIMENTED WITH GAS TURBINES FOR CARS. IT TOO FLUNKED OUT”.
Yes, but only because the engine could run on any fuel available.
The oil companies and the Feds did not like that.
Today Toyota has a comparable opposition.
Their hydrogen car is delivered with a system that produces electricity, heat to power a house and hydrogen to fuel up the car at home.
This system uses natural gas or LPG.
The regional power companies don’t like the idea and there is no network for hydrogen available so the project is dead although the car is very good.
Paul Biggs- “I thought you drove a golf cart – not quite the same thing. Anyway, hydrogen fuel cells are the future.”
I agree that fuel cells are in the ‘over-the-rainbow’ future.
I was in a VC board meeting when a graph was put up showing the rise in stock price of fuel cell visionary Ballard Power, in which the VC’s were early investors. The vertical axis was a log scale, as the price had risen from $2 to $130 in a few years. VC investors predicted that in 3 years, Ballard would be selling a million fuel cell energy systems per year to car makers, and 10 million fuel cells per year for residential furnaces.
The year was 1999…
Even if the laundry list of fuel cell problems are solved, the remaining issue is the challenge of storing enough hydrogen to achieve a decent range between refills.
So far, the best way to densely store hydrogen involves attaching hydrogen atoms to short linear chains of carbon atoms. By varying the length of the chains using nano-engineering (previously known as organic chemistry), it has been demonstrated that the resulting material is a fluid over most terrestrial temperatures and pressures, is cheap to produce, and has the added benefit of providing extra energy storage in the carbon-carbon bonds holding the linear chain together.
This magical material is commonly known as…. gasoline.
The concept of an electric car for the masses was naught but fanciful dreaming from the first. I wouldn’t buy a hybrid either. Lead-acid batteries are really heavy, and the others cost more than an arm and a leg.
As noted above, batteries for auto propulsion . . . all of them, are downright hazardous to health. Current densities are extreme.
I saw an article in a German rag which said the the battery in the Mercedes display model had a capacity of 20 killowatt hours. And would cost $30,000 to replace, battery cost only.
The resale value of even the hybrids will be next to nothing after only 3 years or so. Of what value is a used automobile when it will shortly be needing a good many thousands of dollars of work done on it? What is the cost per mile when the real depreciation of the battery is figured in?
But, but, but…isn’t chrysler going to help control earth’s thermostat anymore??
What about the tipping point? and the carbon footprint? i mean, the ‘science’ it’s ‘settled’ right??
Someone who was very careful in what he said told me that hydrogen was a very difficult substance to handle and store, it attacks stainless steel with gusto. It is not a mineable resource like coal or oil, it has to be manufactured. The energy costs may exceed the hydrogen benefits.
Let’s stay with gasoline, 100+ yrs. of engineering improvements should not be thrown away. Car engines that reduce the number of working cylinders under light loads get better mileage than Prius claims. Remember that petroleum shortages are artificial, the result of green loonies and stupid, short sighted politicians. Drill baby, drill.
I look forward to the pleasure of hearing that Prius owners are being swindled by battery rejuvenator snake oil salesmen.
It is just a nature . The weak fall by the wayside
Whether one goes with electric cars or hydrogen-fuel cell cars, the basic fly in the ointment reamains. You still have to generate the power that goes into these cars.
Ah, we’ll do it all from solar and wind.
Yes, right after we power our industry (sic), hospitals, lighting, rail, shipping, homes, etc.
You still are going to plug these things into the same old aging grid.
Ok. let’s all go with diesel.
Oh, Europe competes there, as they use the diesel and we get the gasoline.
Semi and Rail use diesel. Trans-Oceanic global shipping uses bunker oil and has to dip into the diesel on account of over-use of bunker oil.
Ok, we’ll use LNG. Oh, that’s used in power-plants, so there’s not enough of it.
Darn, we have to use all the fuels available.
Or, we can pass legislation to make America walk.
Won’t that be special.
Here’s a car that runs on firewood – solid made American car combined with some of that well known Finnish hi-tech:
http://www.hs.fi/autot/artikkeli/T%C3%A4ytt%C3%A4+h%C3%A4k%C3%A4%C3%A4+kohti+tulevaisuutta/HT20080914SI1TT03jbi
Maybe the Finns should have taken over the US-car industry… LOL
FIAT = Fix It Again, Tony.
Curmudgeon Geographer (15:50:49) :
Thanks for that link. I have always felt that pneumatic hybrids have advantages over electric versions using batteries or carbon matrix super capacitors. This engine design seems very well suited to pneumatic hybrids.
stick with gasoline. Soon as fusion reactors come online you can produce synthetic gasoline. Completely carbon neutral.
No need for investments in anything but a proper fusionreactor.
Now if those that are doing the crop modification thing could spend some time on human embryos,
”get our super fast deluxe wings for your next child” 1,000 km without a rest .
I am with rbateman
Insane UK Government money in grants for electric cars to assuage the Green frantics. I have a holy ‘lectric car owner near me. I asked him how he liked using coal fired and oil/LPG power to charge his beloved machine. He said he used renewables to do the charging so I showed him the actual output figures for UK wind Power generation. I certainly wouldn’t connect one to an electric chair! Our Surrey Hills wind is presently 2 km/h! A single recharge for my neighbour might take weeks!
For the money spent by our Government on renewables we could have built some shiny new Nuclear Power plants! Constant electricity supply in any weather! Clean and quiet.
rbateman (21:48:11) :
Whether one goes with electric cars or hydrogen-fuel cell cars, the basic fly in the ointment reamains. You still have to generate the power that goes into these cars.
Ah, we’ll do it all from solar and wind.
Yes, right after we power our industry (sic), hospitals, lighting, rail, shipping, homes, etc.
Clearly, the intention is to enable the public to buy green cars with govt loans and ensure the availability of electricity via the existing grid by closing down all the industry.
People no longer have to commute to work, this solves the problem with the small distance range of the electric cars, and reduces coal by product needs for mending roads.
Simples.
Here’s a valuable site with a great deal of information about batteries. Anyone contemplating buying a EV or hybrid would benefit from studying the information provided here: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm
How come my post (23:54:18) is still “awaiting moderation”?.. or is it just me and my computer?…
[Reply: Sometimes moderator coverage is sparse between around midnight and 4 a.m., U.S. Pacific Coast time [GMT -8. I think.] Your comment is posted now. ~dbstealey, moderator]
People no longer have to commute to work…
Not *all* of us are retired…
Last year I carried a gas can and helped several people that ran out of gas. They were up and running in 5 minutes or less. If your electrics run down, it will take hours to recover a 30 mile driving range. People are learning that wind is expensive and unreliable. Electric is great for people that don’t have jobs. It is even better if they use a bicycle.
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_Jim (18:19:08) :
Hmmm …
Can I ask y’all how the following critical functions were/are accomplished in your electric vehicles:
1) Cabin heat – bring the passenger compartment temp up to a livable and comfortable, healthful level
2) Defrost – raise the temperature of the vehicle glass above that of the ambient air’s dew point; melt ice/sleet from the windscreen; sometimes dehumidify the warm cabin air (preventing the condensation from warm, moist air present in the cabin)
3) Air Conditioning – make vehicle travel doable for a majority of those not prone to self-immolation in the summertime in the lower-numbers latitudes
The excess heat produced by an internal combustion engine serves as the basis for two of the three vital functions for motorists in a goodly portion of the US of A; basically, anyone not west-coast based particularly right along the coast.
Air conditioning requires a power-plant that isn’t idle at stops as the prime mover in most electric vehicle seems to be designed to do.
*******
Good questions. In fact, except in the mildest of climates, these points should show that pure electric cars are almost useless at times. They’d work for in mild periods in my E US climate, but what about winter? You can’t run electric-powered heat (or A/C) from batteries — it’ll drain them almost immediately.
The only solution I can see is an additional, small (say 10 HP) IC engine to provide heat &/or air-conditioning.
That being the case, why bother — just run the whole car from a small IC engine.
I have just googled for 20 minutes. None of the responses tell us how much a charge costs and how far the range is. There is one site that is a subscriber network and you pay 720 dollars a year for charging acces. That means you must charge along their roadway and even out of state, it is worthless. One place says 1 hour charge is 10 miles driving. That means you can maintain a speed of under 10 miles an hour if including chargiong stops. One site mentioned they may come out at $7 dollars per hour on the charger. That is very expensive. I expect if the cruising range is so short, away from home, you may expend 50% of your energy driving to charging points.
Like most “alternate fuel” vehicles, these were going to be nothing more than ultra-low production “test” vehicles.
I bought a Caliber SRT4 on August 29, 2 days later it was formally dropped for the 2010 model year. A month later we discovered that Fiat was dropping the entire Caliber platform after 2012. Now it appears the production on the car for two model years is as low as 2000. While that might be “cool” for the rarity factor, it also means parts will be almost impossible to get… not a good proposition for a 300HP turbo 4.
I have an 87 Daytona Shelby Z that I bought new in 87, and it has been exceptionally good for me. They made 15,000 of them over their 2 year run, which is a very tiny number. Good mileage, good power, fun to drive, and easy parts availability (except for the Shelby-specific parts, which have been gone since 1989). Now, however, I’m seriously wondering if this new Chrysler turbo car was a good decision.
My point is… I know firsthand the problems (translation: cost out of pocket) of owning a very low production vehicle. And since there is no REAL alternative to gasoline powered IC engines, anything else will just be an expensive toy anyway.
Oh yeah, and I can’t even imagine what an electric vehicle would be like when it’s -30 or -40 in the middle of winter. Good luck with that.
On a recent trip to SD talked with a grad student from MI. Told me her ‘rents just sold their lake place in peninsular MI, appraised for taxes at $400K, for $200K.
Nationally, 135% of one-years’ residential inventory is on the path to foreclosure.
In 10 months of this year 120 banks have failed. Next year will see double that number.
Got to see the two biggest windfarms in MN on that and another recent trip to WI. More expensive than nuclear for 20 year life-span.
At current rates of growth(debt, revenues, taxbase), US finance payments on outstanding debt will equal GDP in just a couple decades.
America, are you there? Mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm.