Posts Tagged by Chrysler
Chrysler’s Alternative Fuel Vehicle
| April 15, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I just came across this article on Chrysler’s plan to offer a natural gas-based car in 2017.
I know this sounds like a strange reaction, but personally, this cheeses me off. I see it is an attempt to confuse and distract the consumer from alternate fuel vehicles, so Big Auto can sell more internal combusion engines and Big Oil can pump more gasoline for a few more years while the market scratches its head and tries to sort this out.
Of course, Chrysler is free to choose whatever product marketing strategy it cares to. But the net of this decision will be only two things:
a) An ultimate failure for Chrysler (and the tax-payers who bailed them out after their last many decades of failure). There is no way in the universe that CNG (even though it’s cheap now) will become a viable fuel for the US long-term. How much more will they need from us to cover this fiasco?
and
b) A short-term confusion and turn-off for the consumer, as it will serve to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the evolution to EVs.
As always, not everyone sees it the way I do. I just spoke with Plug-in America co-founder and heavy-duty EV advocate Paul Scott. Paul welcomes Chrysler’s idea, and (though he didn’t say it) clearly thought I was half crazy for my reaction to the news.
But hey — it’s a difference of opinion that makes horseraces.
Amazing News! EVs Need Scale to Produce Profits for Automakers
| April 10, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. That’s the way I feel when I read something as stupid as this article in Automotive News Europe:
TURIN – Chrysler Group LLC will lose more than $10,000 on every battery-powered Fiat 500 it sells, Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne says. That heavy financial hit won’t stop the automaker from launching the Chrysler-built electric version of the minicar in the United States in 2012, underlining the pressure automakers face to improve fuel economy and remain competitive in the race to offer alternative powertrains.
“The economics of EVs simply don’t work. On the 500 that (Chrysler) will begin selling in the U.S. next year, we will lose over $10,000 (per unit) despite the retail price being three times higher” than a version of the minicar with an internal combustion engine, Marchionne said on the sidelines of Fiat S.p.A.‘s general meeting on Wednesday.
“The economics of EVs simply don’t work?” Really? What could this guy possibly mean by making such an outrageous generalized statement? Maybe he means the economics don’t work at very low volumes, when the world is introducing its first ten thousand EVs onto a planet that has roughly one billion internal combustion engine-based cars and trucks in it, the result of over a century of automaking — dominance by a factor of 100,000:1 over EVs.
But this is so obvious. It goes without saying that IBM didn’t expect to make money on the first computer it sold. This can’t be news to the CEO of one of the world’s largest companies. Why wouldn’t he make himself clear? There must be something else going on here.
No. Sure enough, skipping down to the bottom of the article, we see: “Although the per-unit loss is high, the automaker’s total financial hit should be minimal because Fiat-Chrysler, without being more specific, said it would produce a low volume of the electric 500.”
Ah! Thanks for the clarification, Sergio! That’s information we could have used.
Just Got Fooled Again
| November 14, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
This week’s news in electric transportation calls to mind the auto companies’ deceit a decade ago with California’s Zero-Emission Vehicle mandate. According to the Automotive News, Chrysler has disbanded the engineering team that was working to bring three electric models to market as a rush job. This program, of course, was the basis on which they got every man, woman and child in the United States to bail them out with $12.5 billion in taxpayer money. And I suppose we have to add in the $70 million in grants that Chrysler took from the U.S. DoE to develop a test fleet of 220 hybrid pickup trucks and minivans — vehicles that are now scrapped as well.
I was speaking with my friend Bill Moore (of EV World fame) just now about how cheesed off we should all be by this. I mentioned that $12.5 billion is quite a heist. “Isn’t that one of the biggest burglaries in history?” I asked. “Yes,” Bill said. “But they’re too big to arrest.”
Jay Leno, move over.
