The future is electric

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Chrysler upstaged General Motors and other automakers with its announcement this past week that it will introduce a group of electric vehicles for the consumer market beginning in 2010, including a version of its popular Town & Country minivan and Jeep Wrangler Unlimited four-door sport utility vehicle. The third vehicle will be a high-performance Dodge sports car based on the architecture of the Lotus Elise sports car from England. That vehicle also is the basis for a new electric-powered sports car now being sold by the California-based Tesla Motors.

The Tesla Roadster, which sells for $109,000, goes from zero to 60 mph in less than four seconds, and according to Tesla, can travel up to 220 miles between charges of the advanced lithium-ion battery pack. It is all-electric, however, and must be recharged from an outside power source when the batteries run down. At least some of Chrysler’s electric vehicles, however, will be so-called plug-in hybrids, which have an onboard gasoline engine whose sole purpose is to recharge the battery pack while the vehicle is moving.

That way, the car doesn’t have to stop for recharging when the batteries run down, but the car also can be recharged from an external power source. That’s similar to the drive system of the Chevrolet Volt, which General Motors showed recently in its production form. The Volt, which also is scheduled to go on sale in 2010, is built on a specially designed chassis and does not have a gasoline-only equivalent.

Chrysler said it chose to develop electric versions of its minivan and Jeep models to give consumers vehicles that they are familiar with and that are more practical for everyday use than some of the other electric vehicles that already have been produced, such as GM’s discontinued EV1, and some that are on the horizon, such as the Volt.

GM’s initial reports indicate that the Volt, a five-passenger compact about the size of the Toyota Prius hybrid, could cost up to $40,000.

Chrysler hasn’t mentioned prices for the electric minivan or Jeep, but they could come in at about the same price as a Volt. And the theory is that they would be more acceptable to consumers because they are based on the designs of vehicles that already are popular and practical for everyday use.