Enmeshed in the worst business conditions in decades, America’s auto companies are trying to envision the coming world of transportation. For Ford and Chrsyler, the future is atarting to look electric.
Both companies are pushing for federal funds to develop new elctric vehicle programs. Chrysler LLC has submitted a $448-Million plan to the U.S. Department of Energy for the rapid development and manufacturing of electrified vehicles. And Ford has also proposed to the DOE a national pilot project to promote the use of electric vehicles.
Chrysler LLC said yesterday that it has applied for two initiatives established by the DOE — the Electric Drive Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative and the Transportation Electrification Initiative. Both are designed to speed development, demonstration, evaluation and manufacturing of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs). The program would be a 50/50 partnership with $224 million coming from Chrysler and its partners, combined with a matching $224 million from the DOE.
You’d expect Doug Fox, the cordial co-chair of the North American International Auto Show, which opens to the public on Saturday, to have some good spin on how this event would rise above the stench of economic panic in the Motor City, and the country.
Not only did he have the goods, by the end of the conversation, I was convinced that this is a pivotal, but not hopeless time for the car industry.
Don’t be fooled. Gasoline prices won’t be bumping around $2 a gallon for long. Driving a car with good fuel economy still makes sense. Higher mpg means lower operating costs for the household budget and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Happily, car shoppers today have a myriad of options among fuel frugal 2009 cars. You can find something getting 30 mpg or better on the highway at nearly every dealer lot. In some cases, you’ll have to settle for a trim line with a smaller engine and manual transmission to hit the 30 mpg mark.
Jennifer Drukker expected people would stare at her new car. What she didn’t expect was this: “I was at the first stop light after I’d driven off with the car. It was literally the first time I came to a stop after driving off with the car,” she recalls. “The driver of the car next to me rolls down the windows and starts shouting questions.”
If it seems an extreme response to a Chevrolet Equinox, a fairly mainstream SUV, consider that the paint job includes the word “fuel cell” on the sides.
Fuel cell vehicles that turn abundant hydrogen into electricity are one promising alternative to gasoline-burning, toxic-fume-spewing internal-combustion engines. Widespread availability of such cars – which emit water vapor instead of greenhouse gases and stuff that’s flat out unhealthy – is years in the future.
But for Jennifer Drukker, Jamie Lee Curtis (yes, that one) and a handful of other drivers, the future is now.
Chrysler’s 2008 ecoVoyager Concept is a four-door, four-passenger vehicle that is simultaneously sleek, futuristic, and distinctively American. Its one-box design – and the absence of a traditional powertrain setup – allowed designers to make uniquely efficient use of the cabin’s parameters. The ecoVoyager also mates an advanced lithium-ion battery pack to an advanced hydrogen fuel [...]
Chevy may be stepping up on publicity for its upcoming Volt plug-in, but it isn’t the only American automaker finally throwing itself convincingly into the green marketplace.
In a surprise announcement yesterday, Chrysler showed off not one but three vehicles that, at least within a certain range, can get users around without using a single drop of gasoline.
The three models — a sports car called the Dodge EV, an EV Jeep, and a minivan named Chrysler EV — are touted in this promotional video in which chairman/CEO Bob Nardelli (citing the company’s “social responsibility” to provide environmentally friendly products) boasts, “we intend to deliver on that responsibility faster and more broadly than our competition.”
Both companies are pushing for federal funds to develop new elctric vehicle programs. Chrysler LLC has submitted a $448-Million plan to the U.S. Department of Energy for the rapid development and manufacturing of electrified vehicles. And Ford has also proposed to the DOE a national pilot project to promote the use of electric vehicles.
Don’t be fooled. Gasoline prices won’t be bumping around $2 a gallon for long. Driving a car with good fuel economy still makes sense. Higher mpg means lower operating costs for the household budget and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
