Chrysler intros electric trio

Other motor makers announce one electric car. Not Chrysler - this week it announced three of them at once. And an interesting selection they make: a roadster, a van and an off-roader. Chrysler Jeep EV Chrysler's ENVI EV line-up: the Jeep... The latter's the Jeep EV. Like the Chevy Volt, it has a lithium-ion battery to …

[Evil_Medic]

Oi!

Oi! Is it my imagination, or is the jeep's transmission installed backwards?

Quickly, alert the design team before it's too... oh wait, it's gone to prototype stage.

[David Evans]

At least Tesla changed the panels

Why aren't Chrysler mentioning the fact that the Dodge EV is clearly a Lotus Europa with added batteries? Nothing wrong with that, but it just seems a little impolite not to mention it (and pass it off as all their own work).

[Ralph B]

Terminological Inexactitude

You're calling them electric vehicle, but they look like hybrids to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand

They claim these are electric cars, but the design doesn't make me want to vomit and put my eyes out at the same time. Shome mishtake shurely?

[b]

ZZZZZAP!

go chrysler!

who killed the electric car?!

nobody it would seem!

amazing we landed on the moon in 1969, yet in 2008 electric cars are technology news?

damn oil pigs arresting our development!!!

cheers,

bill

p.s. stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum

[Craig Wallace]

ouch

Can't wait to see what happens in a front-end collision with the sports car. SQUISH!

[Richard Willetts]

MPG and uncredited car "borrowing"!!

While I don't doubt Chrysler are responsible for the EV tech in the roadster calling it a DODGE with no qualification is barefaced cheek... it is obviously a Lotus Europa!!!

Secondly... WTH? 50MPG is hardly going to set the world alight!!!

Rich

[Dom]

m/h

Not so fast, are they? Metres per hour is an odd way of expressing things, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way...

What's with the "But it's a rear wheel drive", a sports car _should_ have rear wheel drive. It'd be rubbish if it didn't. Can anyone name a sports car with FWD?

NB: Just because a car has 'sport' written on it, doesn't mean it's a sports car. (As I am fond of telling the PFY at work: Your Clio sport is just a normal Clio with a slightly larger engine and all the bolts tightened up properly.)

[Joe Good]

Price? Plugging in?

Two critical bits of information are missing from the article: (1) Can you plug the vehicles in instead of using the gasoline engine, and (2) What is the expected price of each vehicle?

If the answer to (1) is "no", then they're just hybrids, so Chrysler is misleading us. They're significant improvements on existing hybrids, but they're still hybrids. (My Prius handily beats 50 mpg on long trips, but drops to 36 in our day-to-day use because we make lots of short (<5 mile) trips. If these really do use up their electric charge FIRST, before charging, and give 50+ mpg for short trips, they'd be a big improvement over both existing hybrids and diesels).

If the answer to (2) is, "We don't know that yet", then they're just concept cars, and really not worth reporting on or getting excited about.

[Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware]

@Joe Good

1. Yes you do plug it in:

"Onboard charger - dual voltage

110/120-volt outlet (15A) – standard household power outlet

220/240-volt outlet: (30A) - household appliance power outlet "

2. No word on pricing yet, but then they've got two years to work out the numbers.

[DZ-Jay]

0m/h to 60m/h in 9 seconds?

Is that meters per hour? Damn, that's slow!

-dZ.

[Vadim Glik]

bets on the Dodge

So Chrysler claims that only one of the three vehicles will be ready by 2010, but won't say which. What do you want to bet that it will be the Dodge with maybe about a few hundred units available and probably for "pundit" purchase only, and at a $150k price tag.

[Richard Willetts]

Well on short trips...

.... they won't use any fuel at all... they are not assisted hybrids like the Prius hence Chrysler not calling them hybrids... the petrol engine is not connected to the wheels in any way... BUT surely over the 40 mile per charge range the engine is running constantly to keep the battery topped up hence the 50MPG so seeing as this only applies to longer trips it is less efficient than many diesels for longer journeys.

Granted if you rarely make such trips it represents an excellend advancement but then wouldn't you prefer to buy a cheaper car with no petrol engine at all, maybe some more batteries, that costs less?? I know I would!

[Richard Sloan]

@Fraser

Lotus Elan?

[Mike Moyle]

I'm confused...

"Chrysler claims eight gallons of fuel will allow the Jeep to run for 400 miles. "

So why can't ALL of Chrysler's cars get 50 MPG? If you can do that with the inherent power losses involved in converting internal combustion to electric to drive the wheel motors, why not just drop the battery and announce your 50 MPG fuel economy?

[Chris G]

Ohm's Law?

If it still works and hasn't been redesigned to a new EU standard, I think you got the 15 and 30 amps backwards!

[PunkTiger]

Enough with the BIG cars already!

While I applaud car makers bringing more electric vehicles on the road, why oh why are they focusing on these ghastly vans, SUVs and sports cars? Soccer moms and guys with small willies aren't the only people in the market for an electric vehicle. When I saw "Jeep" in the headline, I was hoping for something along the lines of the 2-door Wrangler. You know... something small-ish. Even the Chevy Volt is a big 4-door sedan. Let's see some smaller electric cars go into development.

And, as for the 40-mile range, in 1904, electric cars with more primitive batteries had a 40-mile range. After 104 years and improvements in battery technologies you'd think they'd be able to go a little further than that by now.

Fire, because even steam cars would be an improvement over petrol.

[Clive Harris]

Can anyone name a sports car with FWD?

Mini Cooper?

I mean the real 1960's Cooper, not the more recent ersatz German one.

Pretty impressive in its day.

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be interesting to see

To see what kind of numbers these cars turn in a mixed usage test. One of the downsides to living in the Los Angeles area is the fact that for most of us the MPG claims made by car manufacturers usually mean exactly shit. Due simply to the fact that the bulk of our driving is mixed use or in the midst of rush hour traffic which means our actual gas milage relates more to a mixed usage rating than what is claimed by the car maker.

[Steve]

I'll repeat people

What the hell is m/h? Has the author lived on the moon for most of his life, or did he just miss mph or not understand what it meant when reading it for the past 100 years? (Or less depending on age - clearly).

[Richard Willetts]

Usage Irrelevent up to 40 miles...

It doesn't matter what your usage is if the journey remains under 40 miles round trip, the petrol used will be zero gallons... hence the NOT hybrids angle, over that mileage it would seem pointless them being electric!

[Jan Buys]

yes, electric...

... but do they fly?

Mine's the one with the wings attached.

[Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware]

@all confused readers

We use a / in all 'per' units, eg. Mb/s, f/s, lb/ft etc.

I'd have thought that in a discussion about cars, it would we clear from the context that m/h doesn't mean metres per hour, men per horse or anything else but miles per hour.

However, if readers find this too much of a leap, we can use mph instead.

[David Hayes]

US MPG != UK MPG

In the US a gallon is ~3.78 litres, whereas in the UK a gallon is ~4.55 litres. 50 MPG (US) ~= 60 MPG (UK). 60MPG for a petrol is a good figure, especially a 4x4!

It's not a huge leap towards 100MPG (UK), but it's all moving in the right direction.

[David Hayes]

mi/h

Why not mi/h for miles per hour, otherwise, it looks too SI, and that m = metres.

[michael]

m/h

well it is american cars so they must be miles as americans do not use meaters aprently they are to complex for them