Two months ago we went for a ride in the Dodge Circuit EV. We can now say with confidence that it is worth waiting 70+ days to make the shift to the left side of the car, following a brief spin around Cobo Hall in a prototype vehicle during the SAE World Congress here in Detroit.

We got to spend about 15 minutes in the car with John Myers, who works for Chrysler's ENVI and was project lead on the Dodge Circuit EV. Not to take anything away from what Chrysler has done here, but every time we get behind the wheel of an EV, we get the same giddy smile. It will be a long, long time before the thrill of driving an all-electric vehicle wears off. Chrysler isn't the first to realize that building an EV off of a Lotus platform makes for an incredibly fast and fun experience (see also: Tesla Roadster)

We escaped from the dark confines of Cobo Hall onto a decently sunny day and cruised along the river and past the Ren Cen, gunning the Circuit whenever possible. A car like the Circuit does not like to be stuck on roads with 25 mph speed limits, but those roads made up most of the prescribed route. Still, the instant torque of the electric motor is a rush you get to experience all the time in city driving; each time you pull away from a red light and stop sign you're wondering why gasoline engines ever became popular. The trouble is you then have to stop right away, which brings about some pretty strong regenerative braking action, something that Chrysler needs to work on before making the Circuit available for sale. Keep reading about the EV's good and bad qualities after the jump.

Chrysler is celebrating Earth Day today by unveiling the first four of what will be a fleet of 250 battery-powered minivans for the U.S. Postal Service. The USPS will be using the vans for a variety of duties at locations around the country – including daily home delivery. The vans themselves are based on the concept Town and Country EV that was unveiled last Fall by Chrysler. However, because of the duty cycle used by the Postal Service, which generally amounts to only about 18-20 miles per day on a fixed route, these vehicles are being built without the range extender seen on the concept. However, the electric drive portion of the vehicles, including the motor, electronics and A123 System lithium ion battery pack is identical. The head of Chrysler's ENVI division, Lou Rhodes, told AutoblogGreen this morning that Chrysler is marketing this battery-only version of the van to commercial fleet customers who typically have shorter range requirements. The extended-range version will be focused on retail customers.

The initial batch of vehicles include a pair of right- and left-hand drive versions, and the total fleet will include a mix of both. The Postal Service will be using the vehicles for whatever applications they have in different regions of the country. The intent is to evaluate the usability of electric vans, as well as the interaction between the vehicles and the infrastructure. In addition to the USPS, ConEd, Duke Energy, DTE Energy and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) will participate in the test program.


[Source: Chrysler]

When Chrysler announced the creation of its ENVI division to spearhead the development of electric vehicles back in September 2007, it was seen by most as a knee-jerk response to the introduction of the Chevrolet Volt. When Chrysler debuted a trio of concepts a few months later at last year's Detroit Auto Show they were seen as the usual vapor that would never see production. Same story when another trio of converted production cars were shown last September. Compared to the Chevy Volt, these were seen as a half-baked attempt to grab some of the EV spot-light without building an optimized dedicated vehicle.

Last fall, Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli announced that at least one of those vehicles would go into production by 2010. Last week Green Fuels Forescast sat down with ENVI President Lou Rhodes and Executive Engineer Doug Quigley to talk about the electric drive systems being developed in Auburn Hills. Rhodes and Quigley revealed some very interesting information about air vs. liquid cooled batteries, range-extender sizes and more. It turns out the development of these electric vehicles actually started back in late 2005, before the Volt was even conceived. Rhodes also promised that additional announcements about which vehicle would be built and who would supply batteries will be coming in the next few weeks.

[Source: Green Fuels Forecast]

People are rightly skeptical about whether or not the Chrysler electric vehicles will ever make it to market. For now, all we can say for sure is that some of Chrysler's EV prototypes can go for a spin around the Washington DC Convention Center. We were able to go for a ride in the Dodge EV and the Jeep ER-EV with Crysler's Douglas Quigley, executive of product engineering for ENVI (the Chrysler electric vehicle "start up") when we were in town last week, and you can see our video of the rides (no drives yet, sadly) after the jump.

Quigley said that it is not Chrysler's intention to sell 100,000 of the Dodge EVs a year. You can roll your own joke about that, but his explanation was that the battery pack that is good for 150 miles will be expensive and therefore the target audience is someone who wants to cruise through the city or on the track for a few hours on the weekend. He's got a lot more to say about these two vehicles in the video, including how they're being used for testing in Arizona, what might make it into a possible production version and how fun it is to drive the Lotus Europa-based Dodge EV.

Looks like Chrysler is still a day late and at least $7 billion short. While the company announced yesterday that it would shut down its plants for a month, the news is out today that the smallest of the Big Three will try to put its best face forward and bring an electric Jeep Patriot (with range extender, like the Renegade) to the Detroit Auto Show next month. How do we know this? Because Chrysler doesn't like the blogs.

After trying to keep a lid on its upcoming auto show debuts by not inviting bloggers to the preview backgrounders, Jalopnik was able to squeeze some not-too-inspiring information out somehow - and then promptly put the information on the web. We don't know too many details about the Jeep Patriot EV, but we do know it has a claimed range of 40 miles on battery post. The Patriot EV is the fourth vehicle from Chrysler's ENVI unit, following the Dodge EV and the EVs based on the Town and Country Van and the Jeep Wrangler. The standard 2009 Jeep Patriot gets 28 mpg hwy, 23 mpg city and starts at around $15,683 on the market. The Jeep Patriot EV will cost, well, we'll just wait until it's more than vaporware to start thinking about that.



This post has been updated to remove wrong information.
[Source: Jalopnik via Autoblog]

The Chevy Volt has drummed up an absolutely huge amount of hype for General Motors. The car isn't expected to be sold this year or even next near. No, those eager to lower their petroleum usage for transportation in a GM bowtie will need to wait until late 2010 before the new car is expected to be available, and that's assuming everything continues to go relatively smoothly with the car's development. But General Motors has still gotten plenty of publicity, and most of it positive, for even starting on the extended-range electric vehicle in the first place. And now, perhaps Chrysler is trying to get in on the positive spin as well. Perhaps the automaker is ENVI-ous? Or is the automaker preparing for its rumored corporate takeover?

Those of you who use Gmail are probably very familiar with the short little advertising blurbs across the top of your inbox. Those brief ads use keywords from your emails to try and predict your interests, and advertising bits for Chrysler's ENVI program are showing up using "Volt" as a keyword. One one hand, this should be expected, considering that anyone who's interested in the Chevy Volt may be interested in Chrysler's ENVI project. Not all agree with that assessment, though, as you can see here. What's more, that ENVI site has almost nothing of real substantial interest to the green automotive crowd. We'd expect more from Detroit's third largest automaker if its actually going to be attracting attention to the ENVI minisite.

[Source: EcoGeek]

With the Democratic National Convention wrapping up tonight and the Republicans getting ready for their convention next week, this is a good time to take a look at one of the automakers who is/will be at both events. Chrysler's VP of external affairs, John Bozzella, talked about his experiences in Denver this week trying to get "Congressional support for funding the auto industry's technology transformation to build a new fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles." Please, don't call it a bailout.

In an interview at the Chrysler site The Firehouse (subs req'd), Bozzella said that after talking to Dems this week and GOP members next week, he hopes that a new technology partnership that would support automakers as they design vehicles that use less fuel and emit fewer greenhouse gases could be funded before next year. The partnership would loan automakers money "to transform Chrysler and the industry at a time when the capital isn't available to do so. That's why it's important to Chrysler because it gives us the access to capital to drive ENVI, to drive our hybrid strategy and to continue to make progress across the fleet on fuel economy. It's important to the country because we can't make progress on energy security and reducing greenhouse gases without a significant contribution from the auto industry." Somebody make a note of that.

[Source: The Firehouse (subs req'd)]

Dodge Zeo concept

As company after company announces electric vehicle additions to their lineups by 2010, Chrysler is again expected to be a late arrival to the green-car party. The automaker started the semi-autonomous unit, ENVI, last year specifically to design and develop electric drivetrain vehicles like the Dodge Zeo concept pictured above but any belief they can put one of their creations on a showroom floor in a timely (read "competitive") fashion seems misguided. Company spokesperson, Nick Cappa, in a recent e-mail to the Detroit Free Press said they are currently developing electric vehicles and are "...planning on product within three to five years,". After the past disastrous quarter ,that saw sales plunging 22 per cent, there are many who aren't sure the company will even last that long. Bought up by Cerberus Capital Management last year, it has recently been busy fighting off bankruptcy rumors.

Nick Cappa, for one, still seems to be taking the long view. Defending the company's tortoise-like pace getting into the rapidly expanding hybrid market he says, "If you want to go ahead and make everything a full hybrid system, fine, but what if you can turn everything into a range-extended vehicle and take it beyond the 2020 campaign for 35 miles per gallon? The new technology ENVI is developing could do that." We hope, indeed, his confidence is well-placed and that they pick up the pace a notch or two.




[Source: Detroit Free Press]

Perhaps growing a little tired of all the media attention being focused on their competitors electrically driven vehicles such as GM's E-Flex and fuel cell work, Chrysler has announced ENVI. ENVI is a new organization within Chrysler that will operate as a sort of skunk-works focused on electrically driven vehicles. The new team is being setup to function semi-independently like a start-up company.

Unlike most start-ups, ENVI will have access to all of Chrysler's engineering and research resources. CEO Bob Nardelli has assigned Lou Rhodes as the President of ENVI and will report to Product Development chief Frank Klegon and Procurement VP Simon Boag. Rhodes was previously the Director of Advance Vehicle Concepts and Innovation. Hopefully ENVI will be able to pull some of the diverse development programs that Chrysler has had together and get something viable brought to market a little quicker.

Press release behind the break.

[Source: Chrysler]