Posted on Sunday 2 March 2008
When Chrysler rolled out its trio of hybrid concepts (ZEO, EcoVoyager, Renegade) at last month’s Detroit Auto Show, no one envisaged it would be a sign the carmaker was serious about offering a full hybrid lineup one day. Latest comments from Chrysler’s new President Jim Press reaffirm the carmaker’s desire to make every model available with a hybrid option, which also sounds remarkably similar to claims from Press’ former employer Toyota.
Speaking at a recent seminar, Jim Press said that eventually every vehicle Chrysler makes would be hybrid-powered. He wasn’t willing to give a timeline but revealed the new CAFE laws, forcing carmakers to lift fleetwide fuel economy levels to 35mpg by 2020, would be easier to meet with more fuel-saving hybrid models, reports Popular Mechanics.
Last year, Toyota’s vice president in charge of powertrain development, Masatami Takimoto, made the bold claim that by 2020 hybrids will be the standard drivetrain and account for “100 percent” of Toyota’s cars as they would be no more expensive to produce than a conventional vehicle.
Somehow I just don’t buy it.
There is no way you are going to tell me that building a vehicle with an engine, batteries, special transmission and regenerative brakes is as cheap as building the same car with just an engine.
How about making every single model availabe as a flex-fuel (E85 or regular) vehicle?
Or how about offering a high compression diesel in every model?
Hybrid Hoopla…
“Hybrid Hoopla”
Maybe so, but it is the right kind of noises that the company needs to make to keep afloat. Lets be honest. Oil is going to stop being dragged up from the ground in about 15 years. The the reserves will last about 5 at the most at a massive premium. Thats only 20 years till there is no oil whatsover to be used for cars.
It takes approx 5 years to develop properly a current model car. you throw in the technology required to make them hybrids/whatever it will take a mnimum 10 years. They then only have 5 years to iron out all the kinks and have the 2nd generatio of these models running effectively before every last drop of oil on the planet is gone !!!
Sir Yap Yap,
Please provide us your source for such a dismal prediction of when the planet will run out of oil. What I have been recently reading says other wise. I totally agree with Gus that Chrysler seems to be in a marketing out of desperation phase with their predictions that they will provide a hybrid version of all of their vehicles. Now, other manufacturers have provided similar predictions, Honda and Toyota (Honda has back pedalled and stated that they will not totally hybridize their line up), and they also did not provide a time line. The big difference is that Honda and Toyota seem to be in a much better position to make claims that they will be fully hybridized in the near future.
Oh, on a side note (sort of). I drove by a Dodge, Jeep, Chrysler dealership tonight on the way home and it hit me. There are a whole lot of BIG, HEAVY, THIRSTY cars in their inventory. A hybrid vehicle for the sake of being a hybrid is foolish, just ask Honda concerning their sad attempt at trying to get folks to see any sense in the Honda Accord V6 Hybrid.
Yappie, there’s more oil under the American west (see Green River Project) than was ever in all of the middle east, as well as the recent discovery of a huge reserve in the gulf of Mexico.
So do some research before making claims like that.
>>It takes approx 5 years to develop properly a current model car.
It took 5 years in the 90’s. Now, everything from sketches to production only takes 18-24 months, thanks to computer assisted design.
Gus; despiration or not, doing a hybrid isnt as hard as the companies are making it out to be. all this technology exists. has for years. the car companies are so used ot making a car a certain way, even the engineering process is like an assembly line now.
yappie, gus is right. the states (as well as canada) have more oil reserves than the arabic peninsula ever had. theres more oil off newfoundland in the grand banks than you know. the problem is the current rate of consumption. saudis have been pulling up oil for 200 years now, that same amount of oil would last much less time at todays rates. stop listening to al gore. if he couldnt beat a retarded monkey for president, what makes you think hes qualified to predict the future?
turkle; the only thing that chrysler is missing is a sub compact. otherwise they have a full and complete line-up. they just suffer from the same problem as the other 2 american makes. people buy american trucks and foreign cars. simple as that. if more people wanted to buy the calibre, then u might see more of them on that lot, but something tells me all you saw was pick-ups and SUVs, and probably a whole lot of caravans.
raptor; not quite that short, but yes the claims of 5 years are absurd. one example is the next mazda3/ford focus. there have been spy pictures of the new 3 floating around the internet for several months but we havent even seen a design concept in the shows. they’ve been road testing a car for the last half year that isnt even due out for another year (’09 at least). I can tell you, from direct knowledge of the supplier parts industry that theres at least a year of pre-production shake down on those cars. so in the end, 3 years, i would say… from the word “go”, to develop a full new car.
woo hoo…..people responding to me….
I was typing information passed on via a “supposedly sound information point (but now noted as not by my esteemed posters)”….i stand corrected….national Geographic et al.
I suppose i should be reading “texan oilman’s weekly” for my information instead
So lets all get the yanks to dg up the oil reserves that they are sitting on and stop forcing the price of it over $100 a barrel, just so that they can corner the market in the future when everyone else has exhausted their reserves.
As for the car turnaround. Meh.
Thing is if you start a new car from scratch, and start the designing, and then development till first one rolls off the assembly line a 5 year turn around isnt absurd but maybe far fetched by a year.. Oh and Im not talking about facelifts or the next gen of a current car, im talking about a brand spanking new car!
Have a good one !
forget hybrids — the wave of the future is AIR POWERED VEHICLES. check out the air car web sites. go for it before you’re left behind!