Chrysler's Green Vehicles are Shocking News

Chrysler managed a couple of surprises the other day by showing off three new vehicles that use lithium-ion batteries: two existing models, a Jeep Wrangler and a Chrysler minivan that can run on batteries, which also have a small gasoline engine; and an all-new, all-electric Dodge sports car.

An electric vehicle, like the old General Motors EV1 of the late-1990s, runs on batteries all the time. A hybrid is driven by a conventional internal combustion engine and/or a battery-driven electric motor. In a typical hybrid, like the Toyota Prius, the internal combustion engine recharges the batteries.

In a plug-in hybrid, like the upcoming Chevy Volt, the batteries can be recharged with household current, or by the conventional engine, giving it a greater range. There aren’t any plug-in hybrids on the market yet, but there are several being developed.

The first surprise was a mild one – the fact that Chrysler had these vehicles in the product-development pipeline at all, without word leaking ahead of time. The second, bigger, surprise was that Chrysler said in a Sept. 23 announcement that they could go on sale as soon as 2010 for North American consumers, and for European markets after 2010. Chrysler wouldn’t say which model or models it will build.

What’s surprising about that is that it’s so soon. People in the industry were quick to contrast Chrysler’s announcement with the Chevy Volt. In the future, the Volt could also be produced with an all-electric powertrain, or even with a hydrogen-powered fuel cell.

It’s not true that industry watchers have been waiting forever for Volt sales to begin, since its debut at the Detroit auto show in January 2007, but it seems that way. Volt production is supposed to start in late 2010, almost four years since it was first announced.

“GM spoke about it, and spoke about it, and spoke about it, until people were wondering if it was ever going to come out, and by the time it did, whether it’s still going to be relevant,” said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst for Edmunds.com.

Part of the process has been getting the bugs out of the lithium-ion batteries the Volt depends on. At the time the Volt was announced, nobody could mass-produce the batteries. To this day, people in the industry are a little vague whether all the bugs in the batteries have been worked out – they have a rare but spectacular tendency to catch fire.

The Chrysler electric vehicles also use lithium-ion batteries, so it appears both Chrysler and GM are confident the battery problems have been defeated. Toyota and Nissan have also announced plans to produce cars with lithium-ion batteries, so you like to think they can’t all be wrong. That really would be a surprise.