Some are suggesting that GM will attempt a similar feat with their minivan expertise.  GM had all but abandoned the minivan segment as they have seemed to lose their luster.  But if you want to make an electric vehicle that has extended range the minivan is the perfect shell to put those components into.

The Chrysler EV runs for 40 miles on batteries and then an gas motor kicks in to recharge the batteries to keep the car running.  This is the exact system that GM is using for the Volt (and the one that makes the most sense for people that can’t afford to have more than one car).  The batteries for it would be in the floor of the minivan where storage used to be.  A small sacrifice for a soccer mom keen on using volts instead of gas to cart her kids around.  Whereas the Volt will have a battery pack that is shaped like a T and goes down the middle of the car causing the loss of the middle rear seat, the minivan would be able to still seat 7.

The floor is also the ideal place in terms of handling.  The battery pack for any EV will weigh hundreds of pounds when all put together.  You want that weight as close to the ground as possible to keep the vehicle stable around corners or for defensive driving.

Oh well, they’re not really car guys after all.  And they do have a point, the electric motor in the volt will do 0-60 in 9 seconds.  A respectable time, but not fast by any means.

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chrysler ev

A while back we reported that the Dodge EV had a good chance of being the vehicle that Chrysler puts into production in 2010.  Eventually all three will be in production, but only one of them will get there in 2010, the others will be a bit further off.  We’re now seeing reports that the minivan could be the first EV into production.  And the more we think about it the more it makes perfect sense.

“We’ve certainly got the possibility of electrifying our vehicles now,” said Reid Bigland, president of Chrysler Canada Inc. “It’s not pie-in-the-sky.”

The only competition for the minivan ev would be the Chevy Volt, a four seater car.  If the Chrysler EV can get the same 40 miles without using any gas, and if it will get decent mileage while using gas (Chevy claims that the Volt will get 50 on gas), the minivan could steal a few customers of the Volt and a few that were waiting for a bigger vehicle. 

There are plenty of people that would like to get something like the Volt but they either have too big a family or they need to haul too much stuff around on a regular basis for the Volt to be practical for them.  The Chrysler EV is the perfect solution for them.  They get 40 miles of gas free driving and pretty good (great for a minivan) mileage after that. 

The other reason for the Chrysler EV to be the first is the simplicity of it.  The Chrysler Town and Country already has a lot of storage in the middle of the vehicle for the stow and go seating.  If the owner opts for swivel and go instead of the stow and go that storage space isn’t used for the seats (since the swivel and go can’t fold into the floor), it’s just storage.  The batteries needed to make the Chrysler EV will go there, so the owner will get the swivel and go seats but they lose the storage capacity.  A small price to pay for the ability to use no gas.

“We didn’t have to do much tear-up,” Quigley says of the conversion process: engineers simply filled the second-row seat tubs with batteries intead of foldaway seats, and put Swivel ‘N Go seats in the van instead.

The location of the storage is optimal for the batteries.  It’s low to the ground and in the middle of the vehicle.  Nothing needs to be done to tune the suspension for handling with the extra 400ish pounds of weight.  Since it’s under the body of the vehicle is should also be easier to keep the batteries cool.

Once you put the batteries in all you have to do is hook up an electric motor to them, provide a small 4 cylinder engine to power it when the batteries are low and you have yourself and EV.  Of course it’s not that simple, some of the components in the EV need to be redesigned, extensive testing needs to be done to make sure that the EV is safe and reliable.  But it’s a lot easier and quicker to do the minivan than it would be to do the Wrangler or the Dodge EV.

They call it a twin drive rabbit.  It has a small 1 liter 3 cylinder diesel engine that puts out 100 horsepower.  Along with that is an electric motor that is powered by a 350 pound battery pack.  The electric motor will be able to power the car for the first 30 miles before the batteries are depleted.  Of course you would plug in the car to recharge the batteries.

The twin drive version is no different on the exterior or the interior than the regular Golf/Rabbit.  Aside from under the hood the only noticable difference is that the battery pack takes up the space that the spare tire used to go in (sorry, they didn’t put hte spare anywhere else either).

The other two EVs are extended range electric vehicles (that’s GMs term for it).  They use batteries for the first 40 miles to power an electric motor that drives the wheels and then a gas engine switches on to extend the range.  The Chevy Volt does the exact same with it’s engine and motor.  The question has been, does the gas engine bypass the batteries like the Volt does, or does it run a generator that recharges the batteries so that the batteries will always power the electric motor.

“The gas engine recharges the battery a little bit,” said Cole Quinnell, a Chrysler spokesman. “But that’s just excess and overflow, not the central intent. It’s more efficient for the gas motor to drive the wheels, not recharge the batteries. The cost to recharge the battery by running the generator is eight times the cost of taking it home and plugging it in.”

Along with the actual dollar cost of using gas to recharge the batteries the longevity of the battery pack is a consideration for this decision.  Rechargeable batteries have a lifespan of only so many charges.  Having the gas engine constantly recharge the battery pack would shorten the life of the batteries significantly.

This first offering is likely to be a small economy car and Carlos Ghosn, head of Renault-Nissan, has said that Nissan will unveil a whole range of electric vehicles by 2012.  While details are sparse about this first car, sources inside Nissan have said that it will be all electric.

Unlike the Volt, the new electric Nissan won’t employ an ICE to extend it’s range.  It’ll use a battery pack that sits along the floor of the car to power it.  Sources say it’ll have a range of 125 miles.  That’s not very far, but it’s far enough for most people on most days.

The price for the small car will be a concern for Nissan as well.  They aren’t giving out any details, but they are stressing that it’ll cost comparably to other small economy cars and that it’ll cost considerably less than the Volt.