Electric Drive to Revive Detroit?

September 25, 2008 – Vol.13 No.27

ELECTRIC DRIVE TO REVIVE DETROIT?

Barely a week after GM formally announced its plans for its Volt Extended Range Electric Vehicle (E-REV), Chrysler has announced three electrics, one for each car division. Dodge will get a sporty all-electric car, Chrysler a family-hauling E-REV minivan and Jeep will get a rough and ready, but green, E-REV.

Like the GM E-Flex vehicles, the Chrysler E-REV’s will travel up to forty miles or so on battery power alone, can be plugged into a standard outlet for recharging, and have a small on-board generator to allow a driving range of up to 400 miles. But the Dodge sports car, which looks suspiciously like a Lotus and about the size of a Tesla roadster, will be pure electric, all battery, with a range of 150-200 miles.

Start looking in 2010 for at least one of these vehicles in the US, perhaps a year later in Europe.

Chrysler won’t be using a common platform for each vehicle, like the one GM is using with its E-Flex. Instead Chrysler will be installing its electric drive in an off-the-assembly-line front-wheel drive minivan and a body-on-frame rear drive SUVish vehicle. Chrysler will have something for every car buyer segment, except those looking for an electric family sedan. They’ll have to walk next door to Chevy for that.

As much as it’s great to hear that GM, and now Chrysler, are jumping voluntarily on the electric drive bandwagon, the companies are still facing a major hurdle: the cost of those lithium batteries that both companies will employ. Battery cost will keep prices for the vehicles high and thus out of the hands of us ordinary folk.

However, a joint project planned for Chrysler, General Electric and the US Department of Energy is aimed at developing a new, integrated energy-storage system to make electric vehicle battery packs smaller and significantly less expensive than current designs. A GE battery chemistry will be used in the project.

Selling the car and leasing the batteries would keep costs down (and insure that batteries are returned to the manufacturer for recycling) yet that kind of complicated deal could turn buyers away. But then, people sign on the dotted line for long term agreements for cell phones where the monthly usage fees subsidize the cost of the phone itself, so maybe that kind of arrangement is acceptable now.

The question that may pop in the mind of many is that if two of the US big three are willing to embrace electric drive, what happens to other technologies such as the variety of biofuels being developed? The answer is quite simple: The market for fuels of all kinds is huge and none are niche markets. Biofuels are desperately needed in aviation. There’s no chance anytime soon that boats and ships will be powered by batteries; they need liquid fuels. Then there’s a wide variety of industrial equipment, agricultural equipment, lawn and garden tools. Even with extended range vehicles some fuel is necessary - bio would be the perfect choice.

Of course a shift to electric drive could take decades. For any impact on oil dependency millions of EVs have to take to the roads. For any impact on the vehicular contribution of greenhouse gases, tens, if not hundreds, of millions of zero emission electric vehicles have to be deployed without adding new fossil fueled power plants to keep them charged.

But does the shift to have to take that long? Everything under the hood of any of the planned electric vehicles is available today; just packaging it into a vehicle is what takes the time. With a full tilt effort from GM and Chrysler (and hopefully Ford too) far more vehicles could be produced sooner and shorten the time needed to make the switch to electric drive from decades to perhaps one.

There is no greater example of the decline of the US than Detroit and its automakers. Electric drive vehicles produced there – not overseas – by the millions, not the thousands, could turn the US auto industry around. The revival of the US Big Three could bring the rest of the nation along for the ride.

Chrysler also announced that it would have 100 electric drive cars ready for fleet testing by 2009 and Chrysler’s GEM division (once Global Electric Motorcars now GreenEcoMobility) has launched its latest 25 mph-tops neighborhood electric vehicle, the PeaPod. Pod-like it is. Beauty will be in the eye of the beholder.

Links:

Chrysler ENVI

http://www.chryslergoeselectric.com