Chrysler's Green Programs Likely To Survive Bankruptcy, Fiat Alliance

Chrysler's Green Programs Likely To Survive Bankruptcy, Fiat Alliance

By John O'Dell April 30, 2009

Company Can't Afford To Drop EV and Plug-in Development If It Hopes for a Future

Chrysler green prototypes include plug-in hybrid Jeeps and Town & Country van and Dodge Circuit EV.
 
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Some quick thoughts on what Chrysler's bankruptcy and reorganization may mean for the company's green initiatives.

Chrysler is going to continue to be run largely by government dictate as it wends its way though bankruptcy -- the Obama administration will be selecting new board members and the Feds will be providing much of the company's working capital -- and the government has made it clear time and again that it wants carmakers to concentrate on fuel-efficiency.

So if Chrysler is to have a post-bankruptcy future, then building cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles that help us kick our oil dependency has got to be part of it, as it must for all automakers.

A large part of that effort, now that Chrysler will be teamed with and ultimately controlled by Italy's Fiat, will be in development of fuel-efficient gasoline and, possibly, diesel engines for Chrysler's U.S. cars and trucks using Fiat technology.

So we can look for smaller, lighter vehicles to be added to the lineup of the company that made its bones with hulking pickups, gas-guzzling Hemi V8 muscle cars and hefty family hauling minivans. And we can surely expect some of Chrysler's more egregiously fuel-inefficient vehicles to disappear.

A Chrysler version of Fiat's popular and tiny 500 subcompact might not make a big hit in a U.S. still worried about the safety aspects of small cars sharing the road with all those Hummers and Expeditions and Rams, but Fiat has other, larger cars, especially in its Alfa Romeo brand, that might transition well in the U.S.

In his press conference today, President Obama skipped over the impact the restructuring will have on Chrysler's green initiatives except to say that Fiat already has agreed to transfer "billions" of dollars worth of "cutting-edge technology" to Chrysler so it can build "new fuel-efficient cars and engines in America."

But Chrysler also may have some technology of its own to bring to the table.

Skeptics believe Chrysler's green programs, particularly the electric and plug-in hybrid-electric prototype vehicles it has shown off in the past year, are vaporware.

But Green Car Advisor spoke with a few Chrysler insiders this morning and they said that there have been no signs that work on those technologies is being dropped or even diminished.

Chrysler also continues to work with former partner Daimler and with the industry-and-government-funded California Fuel Cell Partnership on hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle development.

We suspect, though, that a lot of that rather costly effort has been put on the back burner - especially as the economic crunch has kept gasoline prices from rising and steep gas prices are the best incentive for spending money to develop an alternative like the fuel cell, which produces electricity from hydrogen.

As for the various extended-range plug-in hybrid electric Chrysler and Jeep prototypes and the battery-electric Dodge sports car that Chrysler unveiled last year, word is that the company will keep developing them as long as it has funds for development.

Just hours before the bankruptcy filing was announced today, in fact, Chrysler's advanced technology team meet and the tone of that meeting, one insider said, was that "all seems to be full-speed ahead."

Chrysler had said last year that it intended to bring at least one of its electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles to market in 2010.

We won't hold the company to that timeline. But with so many other automakers now embracing battery-electric technology (the Chevrolet Volt plug-in, a Nissan EV, a Toyota plug-in hybrid and an electric delivery van from Ford all due next year and a Mitsubishi EV by 2012, to name a few), we don't see a post-bankruptcy, Fiat-controlled Chrysler surviving without a portfolio of cleaner, greener vehicles to offer the American consumer.
 

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.