CNNMoney has the surprising story of “Chrysler’s plan to beat the Chevy Volt”:
Chrysler is pinning a huge part of its future on a plan to produce a full line of electric vehicles, at a reasonable cost to both the carmaker and the consumer ...
Chrysler’s strategy hinges on keeping it cheap. The carmaker will dispense with flashy designs in exchange for low cost and flexibility. And it plans to pile on more electric-powered models quickly once the program launches in 2010.
“We aren’t a one-electric-vehicle company,” Lou Rhodes, Chrysler’s vice president for advanced vehicle engineering, told CNNMoney in an exclusive interview. Rhodes is also president of Chrysler’s ENVI, a separate business division tasked with bringing new electric vehicles to market.
Instead of making one, or just a few, electric-only models, Chrysler will sell the same models in both gasoline-powered and electric-powered versions. This low-cost, high-variety electric-vehicle strategy will play a big part in any comeback plan Chrysler may present in hopes of getting government rescue funding.
Wow. If this is really true, if Chrysler will spell this out in the spring for the government as part of a full bailout plan, then the company certainly should be given a chance to put this strategy into place.
Unless this downturn turns into a global recession, gasoline prices should be returning to record levels by the end of 2010 —and breaking records a few years after that.
Here are more details of Chrysler’s electrifying strategy:
Chrysler’s strategy substantially cuts costs, Rhodes said, and it reduces the risk of entering uncharted market territory. That will translate into lower costs and more choices for customers.
If gas prices stay low, Chrysler factories will produce more gasoline powered models. If gas prices rise, factories can start rapidly turning out more electric cars since the models are essentially the same.
Chrysler’s first electric vehicles will be based on current vehicles. The carmaker hasn’t yet announced what the first model will be but, based on prototypes Chrysler revealed in September, it will likely be a minivan, a Jeep Wrangler 4X4 or a 2-seat sports car built in a Lotus body.
At least some of Chrysler’s products will be extended-range electric vehicles, like GM’s Volt. Because the car’s body will not have been designed around optimal weight and aerodynamics, the Chrysler vehicle will need a more powerful electric drive system to provide performance similar to the Volt’s. For instance, Chrysler promises the same 40-mile all-electric plug-in range as the Volt. (After that, a small gasoline engine will start up to produce more electricity as the car drives.) But the heavier Jeep prototype has a 27-kilowatt-hour (KwH) battery back compared to the Volt’s 16 KwH pack.
Round two
Chrysler’s second-generation electric vehicles, which the carmaker plans to start rolling out between 2012 and 2015, will be engineered from the wheels up to use either gasoline or electric power.
No matter which drivetrain the customer chooses, the vehicles will not be compromised, Rhodes insists.
“If you know what you want to achieve up front, you can certainly design that flexibility in up front,” he said.
Electric cars will not have useless transmission tunnels running along the center of the floor, he said. If a rear-wheel-drive gasoline car needs that, a different floor will be used when that version is built.
The electric power systems are also being engineered for maximum flexibility, Rhodes said. Bigger, heavier vehicles take more power to move, whether that power is from gasoline or batteries. For gasoline-powered cars, engineers have to design larger and smaller engines for different uses. A small Jeep Compass, for instance, gets a 2.4-liter 4-cylinder engine while a Jeep Commander SUV can come equipped with a 5.7-liter V8 engine.
But what if going to a larger engine was as simple as just plugging in more cylinders? Chrysler’s electric drivetrains will work something like that. To hold more battery power, larger vehicles will simply get more battery cells. The cells themselves will be exactly the same whether in large or small vehicles. That’s important because batteries are the biggest expense of creating an electric car.
“The real economy is in the cells,” said Rhodes.
Likewise, the electric motor will be the same. It will just be up-sized for bigger jobs.
“All we change is the length of the rotor and the number of windings to span between different power outputs,” Rhodes said.
Even the housing that goes around the motor will be same regardless of the size of the motor . The magnesium housing will be so lightweight that it simply won’t be worth the added cost of creating smaller housings for the downsized motors, Rhodes said.
Electric cars aren’t just a side-show or a public relations move for Chrysler, Rhodes insists, but a major strategic move. Through its GEM (Global Electric Motorcars) subsidiary, Chrysler already claims to be the largest seller of electric vehicles in the U.S. But those are so-called “Neighborhood Electric Vehicles,” ultra-light cars with a top speed limited to 25 miles per hour. Chrysler claims sales of 40,000 GEM cars over the last 10 years. With its new plan, Chrysler plans to produce over 500,000 electric vehicles by 2013.
“This is going to be a big deal for Chrysler,” he said.
This could be a big deal for the country if the company lasted long enough to put this strategy in place.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Comments
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Pangolin Posted 4:32 pm
17 Dec 2008
Check out Neil Young's conversion of a gigantic old Lincoln into an electric/gasoline, series hybrid here. It looks like old Neil is using an electric drive train and a bitty Wankel engine as a motor-generator.
If you can do that to this big 1959 Lincoln you can do it to almost any car. All you need is to have the parts set up as modules and off you go.
Chrysler needs to tell it's engineering team to make it work or go home. The speed with which they can get a functional vehicle to a buyer will dictate whether they live or die as a company.
Neil says he's more than glad to help.
Put the Carbon Back
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amazingdrx Posted 4:59 pm
17 Dec 2008
How about a green revolution version Neil? Living With Revolution?
But really Chrysler, if you are serious please go Fiber Forge carbon fiber body/frame technology too. That might put you in position to buy out GM in a few years.
The key to plugin hybrid, is lightweight. Carbon fiber does it while actually increasing crash protection strength and safety. A 1200 pound economy plugin hybrid would beat the world to the punch. make it a Chrysler.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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justlou Posted 10:10 pm
17 Dec 2008
I don't give a shit -- putting much larger battery packs and larger motors in electric vehicles, especially those designed for transporting 175 pounds of human flesh, makes absolutely no freaking sense! For one, it requires generating much more power to charge the batteries. Where is this power coming from? And get real and get honest -- coal and nuclear.
Forget about it. Chrysler is not going to survive and this is a prime example of why it shouldn't.
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MClemens Posted 11:02 pm
17 Dec 2008
I often get into debates with an uber-conservative co-worker of mine about hybrid/electric vehicles. I contend that we need to get the public to purchase them and get away from standard gas-powered vehicles - even if it requires government intervention to some degree. The problem (at least where I live in southern Iowa) has always been that hybrids were overly expensive and electric vehicles have yet to be available. He argues that government mandates whether at the consumer or corporate level are evil and result in nothing but "socialism" or a "dictatorship" and claims that markets must be the driving force behind it, regardless of its impacts on the climate (which he still claims is heading for the next ice age but that's beside the point). This Chrysler initiative makes a market-driven transition to electrics possible, and in the face of the soon-to-rise-sky-high fuel prices, very likely.
I just hope Chrysler sticks to its guns on this one and the others either follow suit or fall flat on their face.
MClemens
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racc Posted 2:28 am
18 Dec 2008
he way forward is to provide people with a variety of better transportation choices that have less environmental impact. This includes high-speed rail, rapid transit, cycling and walking as well as building communities that don't force people to walk and cycle.
Instead of wasting money bailing out the failed auto makers, it would be far better to provide loans to new, innovative companies that can provide transportation solutions for the future. Funding should also be provided to help transition auto workers to new jobs.
The world marches on. By desperately hanging on to sunset industries, we will far even further behind other countries.
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Bob Wallace Posted 4:23 am
18 Dec 2008
Chrysler, like other American car manufacturers, is in trouble.
Chrysler, like other car manufacturers world-wide, sees that electric cars are the vehicles of the not-so-distant future.
Chrysler sees an opportunity to save its butt by moving as rapidly as possible into the the electric car market. The quickest way to get there is by modifying versions of their current lines, thus saving time and money.
and...
America needs jobs. If we let very major manufacturers go under we take the risk of driving our economy into a deep depression that could take years of recovery.
If we let manufacturers go out of business we are going to be facing enormous amounts of expense to keep millions of Americans fed and housed. We will not permit mass starvation and millions of Americans dying on our sidewalks.
If we spend some money now to keep American car manufacturers alive while they transition to more economic and electric vehicles we stand to create a flow of tax money back into our coffers rather than sending all that money overseas to purchase foreign products from now to eternity.
---
(All that anger at American car manufactures because they made the big cars/trucks/SUVs that Americans wanted to buy and didn't make the shoe-box sized fuel sipper that a half dozen people wanted back when gas was cheap?
Get the f*ck over it. Doesn't matter who shot the hole in the hull when the boat is sinking. What matters is bailing.)
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justlou Posted 4:41 am
18 Dec 2008
One of their big problems now is too many freaking models. Applying electric motors to the behemoths in their product line is just plain stupid.
They should put their efforts into a couple of models that really have some potential sales in the electric market which is primarily going to be in large urban areas.
They should have learned their lessons by observing how many hybrid Tahoes that GM sold.
They need to get lighter, get smaller and get smarter if they want to make the switch to electric.
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:09 am
18 Dec 2008
And I thought it was only software companies that sold vaporware!
"This is the essence of science...you ask an impertinent question and you're on your way to a pertinent answer." -- Fox Mulder, S1E4, "Conduit"
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Bob Wallace Posted 5:14 am
18 Dec 2008
Their market research told them that they would sell more electrics that look like Jeeps than electrics that look like Prowlers. (Remember Prowlers?
Another guess...
Engineering and Tooling told them that they could produce an electric Jeep months/years faster than they could create a brand new super-lite "whatever". And Finance told them that time was of the essence.
(And ask yourself. How many people who bought 4wd SUVs actually needed 4wd or that much interior space? Seems to me that a lot of the market is not driven by rabid rationality.)
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MClemens Posted 6:17 am
18 Dec 2008
I think it was that frenzy that shook the boat up so much that it took on water and nearly capsized. It wasn't just one person/company/lender that shot the hole in it. The frenzy I think has pretty well died, we're bailing now and maybe thinking a bit more rationally. Will Americans now realize that they don't need 4,000 lb 4x4 SUV's to commute to work when they can just as easily afford a hybrid electric? I don't know but I'd say there is a better chance of it now than there ever was.
MClemens
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Bob Wallace Posted 6:48 am
18 Dec 2008
Reversing a moving ship is harder than one that is sitting still....
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2wheeler Posted 7:17 am
18 Dec 2008
This is the company that brought us the "K" car...
Seems we need a new paradigm here, and I'm not sure a Jeep with tons of batteries on board to weigh it down further is going to convince the average Joe Sixpack to convert to sustainable transportation. Maybe if gas were $15 per gallon... (that's another post from today's gristmill)
Seriously, how about converting these companies into transportation companies, with investments in light rail, and maybe coast-to-coast stocks of Flexcar-style vehicle network services in every voting precinct?
I know there are workable electric vehicle concepts out there, including some that can be stacked to run like trains over longer distances...
Meanwhile how about some market signals and incentives encouraging people to live within about 6 miles of their workplace, etc? Many of the lifestyle choices people take as fixed or given, need not be so in the end. 20 years from now, will you care whether your commute to work was in a large or small car? Or whether the earth's climate and biodiversity and sustainability were protected?
American know-how is capable of more.
What would Bucky (Fuller) do?
Moving toward sustainability with hopefulness, one revolution at a time.
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gzuckier Posted 2:26 pm
21 Dec 2008
"The Patriot was heavily hyped, but then dropped without fanfare. ... Evan Boberg, in Common Sense Not Required, wrote that the Patriot never actually worked and had to be towed in its video (the tow truck, he said, was edited out). He also said that the flywheel - holding nearly the kinetic power of a truck at 100 mph - destroyed several test cells and killed an employee before being abandoned. "
http://www.allpar.com/model/patriot.html
Yeah, that makes me feel like giving them some money on the promise of electric Jeeps.
Too bad, I think Chrysler deserves to live, they've always been very engineering-driven; hemispherical combustion chambers, torsion bars, etc.
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Bob Wallace Posted 2:46 pm
21 Dec 2008
But let's kill them because something that they tried 15 years ago didn't work.
Got it....
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amazingdrx Posted 4:09 pm
21 Dec 2008
Drop politics and examine the evidence, you'll see what I mean.
We even have enough credit left to fund it.
Let's hope Obama is thinking along these lines. Plenty of time to argue politics after climate disaster is averted and the economy is back on track.
"What would Bucky (Fuller) do?"
He actually had Chrysler set to manufacture the Dymaxion car.
He is kind of still doing what he always did, helping reinvent the world. His spirit lives on in his work.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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