I believe that being energy independent is not only something we should strive to do for our economic well being, but it should be considered a national security issue as well.  One of the fastest ways we can do this is through the use of electric cars.  I don’t feel that they’re ready to completely replace the ICE powered cars, but given another generation or two of batteries or cheap hydrolisis to create hydrogen for fuel cell powered cars and they will be.  Barring and apocalyptic event we’ll probably be there in 20 years give or take a few.  In the mean time we need to get as far along the electric car path as we can so that when the time comes we’ll be ready to take advantage of the break through.

This blog is devoted to electric cars in general, but more specifically the ENVI division of Chrysler (hence the name of the blog).  I chose ENVI because I think it’s the easiest way for us to get to where we need to be in 20 years.  GM is doing a great thing with the Volt, but it’s very costly for them.  They are making a whole new car from the ground up, including reengineering the components to use the least amount of electricity they can so that the car can go further on the battery pack provided.  That’s 100% custom car, and eventually it’ll be profitable, but not until GM sells a million or so of the thing.

The ENVI division of Chrysler is taking a different approach.  Chrysler is taking currently made vehicles and retrofitting them with an electric drivetrain (the Dodge EV is all new, but it sits on a Lotus Europa frame with new body panels – like the Tesla Roadster – so the costs will be minimal).  Does this mean that the cars aren’t as efficient as they could be?  After all they aren’t optimized for aerodynamics and the components aren’t engineered to use less electricity.

The answer is of course absolutely the ENVI vehicles won’t be as efficient as the Chevy Volt.  That means that they’ll need larger battery packs to go the same 40 miles.  But as far as I can tell that’s the only downside.  Sure you’ll pay for a bigger battery pack, but you’ll also pay less money for more vehicle.  The Chrysler Minivan EV is a simple matter of filling up the underfloor storage with batteries and putting and electric motor under the hood.  The cost of a normal Chrysler Town and Country can aready get up into the 35-40k range, my estimate is that the EV Town and Country will be just a few thousand more.

The best part is that Chrysler won’t have to lose money on every EV sold.  I applaud GM and Tesla for making electric cars as efficiently as they can, but they can’t make them if they’re not around…