Detroit Auto Show: Chrysler Adds Jeep Patriot Extended-Range EV to ENVI Stable
By John O'Dell January 10, 2009
By
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Chrysler, which so far has shown us an electric sports car, an extended-range hybrid minivan and an extended-range hybrid Jeep Wrangler to prove that its green division is hard at work and that the company knows that the future isn't in hemi-V8s, has added a fourth vehicle to its electric lineup.
Just in time for the North American International Auto Show (ta dah!), Chrysler's ENVI unit has retrofitted a Jeep Patriot crossover utility vehicle with an electric drive hybrid system that uses a small gasoline engine to generate juice when the battery pack's initial charge is depleted.
ENVI, for those who don't know, is Chrysler's greenworks. Its name comes from the first four letters of "environmental" and not from Chrysler's feelings about Toyota and others that jumped on the alternative fuels and powerplants bandwagon long before Chrysler figured out which way the circus was heading.
Anyhow, the Jeep Patriot EV, pictured above, is just a concept. Chrysler says that one of the EVs its engineers at ENVI are working on will be put into production in 2010, but hasn't let slip yet which it will be (we're leaning toward the Dodge EV sports car, which has just been renamed the Dodge Circuit).
The Patriot uses a 150-kilowatt electric motor rated at 200 horsepower and boasts a top speed slightly in excess of 100 mpg, Chrysler says.
When it is officially introduced at the auto show in Detroit today, it will wear a green paint job that Chrysler calls "ENVI Green Pearl." And, of course, the gi-normous "EV" logo that's splashed across the sides of all four of Chrysler's EV concepts.
The marketing guys in Auburn Hills must have figured that if it's a green car it really ought to be a green car and have repainted the other Jeep extended-range EV, a Wrangler, the same shade. It was white with giant chromed EV logos when it was in LA - land of bling.
But then, Chrysler has done up the Town and Country extended-range minivan in a deep gray - Liquid Graphite Pearl, to be precise - and the Dodge Circuit is tangerine, or "Tangoreen," so maybe it is only Jeeps that gotta be green to show that they are.
Anyhow, like the other extended range EVs Chrysler unveiled back in September and first publicly showed in November at the LA auto show, the Patriot EV uses a lithium-ion battery pack - Chrysler still hasn't said who the supplier is - and can travel up to 40 miles on all-electric power from a fully charged battery.
After that, the small gas engine kicks on to continue generating electricity to feed the electric motor, which is what drives the wheels.
By the time the fuel in the tank runs dry, Chrysler says its extended-range EVs can tick off 400 miles on their odometers.
And then you just fill 'er up at the first convenient gas station and you can keep driving until you have time to stop and plug-in the batteries for a recharge that will take several hours.
That's if Chrysler makes it out of the deep financial morass it's slogging around in these days, and, once out, actually pushes forward with its apparent commitment to electricity as the gasoline of the future.
The whole ENVI family: Jeep Wrangler and Patriot, Town and Country and Dodge Circuit EVs.
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