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Chrysler alerted the Securities and Exchange Commission that they’d be withdrawing their request for as much as $3.5 billion in loans. The money was to be used for the development of unspecified “green” vehicles.
The Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, passed by Congress in 2007, helps automakers their current plants to build more fuel efficient vehicles. The program is worth as much as $25 billion in total. Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne was on record expressing frustration at the speed of the loan application, stating that it put Chrysler in a ” very, very uncompetitive position”.
12 Comments on “Chrysler Withdraws Request For $3.5 Billion In Loans From Department of Energy...”
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Got to love election year shenanigans. Is there something coming available in president Obama’s second term?
Or maybe they realized NO ONE wants to buy EV’s?
There’s not just no market for EVs, developing one takes additional resources, especially engineering talent better employed to work on new models. Add in the prospect of technical glitches generating cost overruns and dealing with government bureaucracy monitoring the effort, setting up progress mileposts and involving engineers and designers in interminable meetings, and it’s just not worth the effort. State and local governments are used to the strings attached to federal money, but those strings can strangle a for-profit company.
Umm good luck getting a loan for making green vehicles when your cars are red.
Chrysler punted out of making hybrids for the next decade.. then again they could always go the low cost route and duplicate GM’s eAssist. It all depends on what the price of gasoline will be.
Well here is an interesting fact. FIAT already has a vehicle that gets better gas mileage than a Toyota Prius and it’s not a hybrid.
The question is, if they brought it to the USA would Americans buy a two-cylinder vehicle. The TwinAir engine is an inline turbocharged two-cylinder engine that puts out 85 horsepower at 5500 rpm and 107 foot-pounds of torque at 2000 rpm.
According to Allpar.com:
“the Punto TwinAir gets 48 miles per gallon in city driving; 61 miles per gallon on the highway for a combined rating of 56 miles per gallon. That’s within 5 city miles per gallon of the Toyota Prius C, the highest-rated non-plug-in hybrid. On the highway and in combined driving cycles, the Punto beats the Prius which gets just 48 miles per gallon on the highway and 50 miles per gallon combined. The Punto TwinAir also beats the Prius in greenhouse gas emissions: the Prius pumps out 173 gm of carbon dioxide per mile; the Punto produces just 159 grams per mile. The TwinAir also meets Euro 5 emission requirements.”
http://www.allpar.com/news/index.php/2012/02/fiats-new-punto-who-needs-hybrids
For the U.S. market, it would need to be redesigned as a two-seater with the shoulders of the front seat passenger behind the driver’s shoulders in the car.
This vehicle is the size of the previous generation Ford Focus Hatchback, so it’s perfectly fine in American roads without redesigning anything. Ok, maybe the license plate holder.
…not with a six-speed manual, like the article says it has. That and taking over 12 seconds to get to 60 will take it off the short list of nearly all American buyers that don’t live 1.2 miles from a major metro area.
as long as they keep it competitive with a Smart car… or cheaper.
Sounds good, but does the Punto pass US crash standards?
Those are the European estimates. I guarantee you it will rate lower than a Prius when the EPA tests it along with all the updates it will need to pass US safety regs.