Our own Mr. Posky waxed at length yesterday about the Stellantis plan to keep their hands in customers’ pockets long after they’ve driven off the lot. Go read his take, if you haven’t already. Meanwhile, the company took care on Software Day to occasionally focus on an upcoming product – the Chrysler Airflow.
If you recognize that name from the depths of automotive history, please go ahead and give yourself a gold Pentastar. It was a full-size machine produced by Chrysler in the ‘30s, and arguably one of (if not the) first to incorporate streamlining as a method of dealing with wind resistance at speed. Its oddball-for-the-time shape did it no favors and the Airflow was only in showrooms for about five years. Surely Chrysler hopes for a better batting average this time around.
The new Airflow shown yesterday is an EV (because of course it is) wearing Chrysler-ish clothes and appearing to be about the same size as the Ford Mach-E. It’s technically a concept car but a few of the details – real sideview mirrors and realistic lighting – provide clues that this vehicle may be a lot closer to production than we think. It’ll surely ride on a variant of the STLA Medium platform, one of several structures the company showed during its EV day earlier this year.
At that time, the suits told us that vehicles built on the STLA Medium bones could potentially pack over 400 miles of driving range; if true, that will set it up for success against tough competition like the Mach-E and Model Y. It’s worth noting that, during yesterday’s presentation, a screen inside the Airflow was shown to display a readout of horsepower during a simulated acceleration run, with the CGI digit easily eclipsing the 300 mark. That amount of horses would also compare favorably to certain trims of the competition mentioned above.
Speaking of, there’s no shortage of screens inside the Airflow, with units upfront for driver and passenger, plus a couple in the center stack for infotainment purposes and ventilation. In this, it is not unlike the massive Grand Wagoneer, which has four screens in the front row plus three more in the aft compartment. Someone at Stellantis must have a brother working at a touchscreen factory.
With each of the 14 Stellantis brands generously given approximately a decade to prove their worth, a machine like the Airflow could be just the ticket to bolstering Chrysler’s lean showroom. Since the crew at Dodge are busy making electric muscle cars and Jeep is fiddling with off-road EVs, the upmarket EV crossover segment could be the play that saves Chrysler’s bacon.
[Images: Stellantis]
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I still think trying to revive the Chrysler brand is a total waste of time
Not sure reviving Chrysler is a waste of time.
But trying to revive it with this generic-looking thing is definitely a waste of time.
How about a full sized sedan (or…bleaaach…SUV) with the Imperial name and wicked styling? That would say “Chrysler is back.” This just says “I’m a Mazda. Or a Nissan. I’m not sure.”
This.
It might be possible to do something useful with the Chrysler marque, if Stellantis had any idea how.
This idea? It’s even worse than Volvo’s Polestar brand nonsense*.
(* And I say this as someone with two modern Volvos in his driveway. My wife’s is even Polestar tuned and badged.)
People are STILL bringing up the Imperial name? This has been going on for almost 20 years. That is not going to happen! That name, as great as it is and with all it’s heritage, is not a name that will resonate with younger buyers. It’s like reviving Newport or Fifth Avenue. Those names just don’t fit in with modern automobiles.
I don’t know that I really care about this vehicle. But saying that trying to revive the Chrysler brand is a total waste of time represents conventional thinking at its worst.
Chrysler wasn’t doing that well when the 300 was introduced. But the 300 was a huge success. It could still be today if it weren’t left to wither on the vine. The point is, offer a product that people want to buy and they’ll line up at your door.
But most of the industry hive mind doesn’t seem to understand that. They’re busy focusing on financial games, subscription business models and sale of personal information to third parties. What could possibly go wrong?
I think that brands that are new to the EV game need to focus on something to “wow” people first. The “wow” car may not sell in huge numbers, but it will set a tone, if you will. We’ve seen zero from Chrysler in years, and the re-intro is a CUV that looks a lot like a Kia Seltos? Prediction: the market yawns. Ditto for the upcoming Cadillac EV CUV.
I get why Stellantis would aim a EV at the meatiest end of the market – CUVs – but there’s nothing special about this.
Why not make something really cool and special? If it sells, great…but you’re basically creating an image in consumers’ minds, and if that’s the case, the first image shouldn’t be a generic little crossover.
The steering wheel looks like it came from a Virgil Exner Forward Loom era car. Some design cues as well as Easter eggs like this show the heritage of the brand.
“Some design cues as well as Easter eggs like this show the heritage of the brand.”
Maybe? Kinda? It’s hard to see design heritage in any car with a huge gd iPad sticking out of the dash. Nothing screams “why should I blow my hard earned money on this” when it the interior resembles a Best Buy clearance sale.
+1 That screen looks like a giant boil that needs to be lanced.
I’m no fan of any of the excessive Best Buy aisle of big screens like this or in the Tesla or Mach E. The UCONNECT 8.4 that’s in my Challenger is more than enough and is very user friendly.
Well, if Chrysler is to be saved, then it makes sense to make it an EV brand. But I don’t think this car will do the job. It’s just…generic. It’s pleasant looking, to be sure, but at the end of the day, it’s an any AnyCUV. Chrysler’s basically dead to the car buying public at this point, so something bold would be needed to really capture buyers’ imaginations, and this ain’t it.
How about an electric 300 instead?
(If Stellantis is serious about EVs in the US, then Job 1 should be a Ram EV pickup.)
Or … not be serious about EVs, and make a hybrid Ram, and indeed a full-hybrid-available product line?
“Pure Electric!!!” seems to be a solution in search of a problem, compared to hybrids, which in plug-in form, give you decent no-gas commuter options and range and flexibility.
Hybrids are mainly aimed at the hyper-mile, MPG-uber-alles crowd, and I think Toyota has them all pretty much sold.
Seriously…EV pickups are going to be “the thing” that finally gets EVs into the mainstream. And I think Stellantis would be foolish as hell to ignore this.
“Seriously…EV pickups are going to be “the thing” that finally gets EVs into the mainstream.”
Maaaaaaybe. But they’re going to have to do something about, charging, range, and battery degradation before that can happen. Maybe a combination of lithium/sodium cells will do the trick.
The battery issues are pretty much non issues at this point.
Far as charging is concerned, most folks who can afford a full size pickup live in a house with a nice big garage. Well, there’s your charging station.
Not everyone fits this mold. The folks who need serious towing capacity, or the ones who do 1000-mile Interstate trips regularly, will pass on EVs until they meet their needs. But most folks who buy trucks just use them to commute, and to do light-duty hauling from time to time. There are plenty of buyers like this out there, and they’ll love the instant-on power, and the fact that they can just fill up overnight in their own garages.
In fact, I’m in the “I’ll have zero need or desire for a truck” camp, and an EV in the right size might just change my mind.
“and the fact that they can just fill up overnight in their own garages.”
That’s the problem. I can fill up an F-150 in a couple of minutes. And when I invariably run out of fuel, I can refill it *not* overnight. Battery degradation is not a non-issue, it’s a physical fact about lithium ion batteries. I’m not anti-electric. I’ll buy another electric vehicle when these problems are worked out.
A typical EV has 250-300 miles of range. Most people commute maybe 50 miles a day. If you charge it up nightly, it’s likely you’re not going to ever have to worry much about finding a place to charge up.
As I said…they won’t fit everyone’s needs, and if they don’t fit yours, OK. But there’s a huge slice of people this would work just fine for.
“A typical EV has 250-300 miles of range. Most people commute maybe 50 miles a day. If you charge it up nightly, it’s likely you’re not going to ever have to worry much about finding a place to charge up.
As I said…they won’t fit everyone’s needs, and if they don’t fit yours, OK. But there’s a huge slice of people this would work just fine for.”
Look, a consumer doesn’t need to be traveling 500 miles per day for range issues to be a problem. If you’re like most people, there will be times – sometimes urgent times – when you need to be able to recharge that vehicle quickly. I have no doubt that this problem will be overcome in the future. The current technology is not there *yet* and the slice of the market who this would work just fine for is a lot less than you’re estimating. Our disagreement is only over a matter of time, I suppose.
On the other hand, the physical issue associated with lithium batteries will have to be overcome with perhaps sodium batteries.
We own one EV and one gas car. In the 2 1/2 years we’ve owned the EV (which gets most of the use), we’ve never once had a situation where range or recharge speed proved to be an issue. Not once. I think very few multi-car households need more than one gas car at this point.
On a personal level I would really like an EV, and a pickup truck but not an EV pickup. But that comes down more the my use case. I would much rather have a plug in hybrid pickup, as towing range would be a concern for camping etc, heavy loads and EV’s can be an issue, and I think Id rather cart around and engine then batteries that get used 10 times a year, mostly due to the hybrid back up generator use case as Ford has shown.
“Hybrids are mainly aimed at the hyper-mile, MPG-uber-alles crowd, and I think Toyota has them all pretty much sold.”
Hardly.
We’ve owned Honda minivans for 20 years. This past April I got tired of the 13mpg around town BS, and I wanted a more modern structure. We shopped all four minivans on the market. Kia and Honda are still gas guzzling V6s. Toyota went hybrid; I LOVE my Toyotas, but that thing drove horribly.
My wife absolutely loved the Chrysler. Me, I loved the plug-in hybrid. All battery electric around town, and 30mpg on the road (compared to the Honda 21-22).
This is just rational logic.
Well, it sounds like you’re an MPG buyer, and I think you kinda proved my point by trying out the Toyota minivan before settling on a Chrysler (which I hear good things about, by the way).
Makes sense – Toyota offers a hybrid option in almost every single non-truck model it makes.
Actually accurately describes the freeking fools!
Actually accurately describes the freeking fools!
It’s not dead to the car buying public. I see quite a number of Pacificas.
Why does every electric car concept have to look like some cardboard/MDF futuristic piece of garbage out of a late-90s video game? There is no reason for it at all. If automakers want people to adopt electric cars, they should design them similar to what people already like to purchase.
I liked the styling of the old airflow. Can stellantis please make this look NOT like everything else? Even if it means sacrificing the equivalent of a few mpg please we’re begging for some styling.
Looks good to me.
But it needs to be mighty efficient if they want to keep the cost down, because otherwise it would need a 120 kWh battery to go 400 miles. As for aerodynamics, this doesn’t appear to be groundbreaking.
I like the Airflow name, but this doesn’t seem like the majestic vehicle that should wear it.
Almost wonder if the name use is sarcastic, since the Airflow was *the* biggest flop in the company’s history.
Well, this one’s going to flop too. Nothing at all to get excited about. The Airflow looks like a Kia Seltos, just with a pricetag that’s twenty grand higher. No skirts are going to be blown up over this.
If brands that are new to the EV game are smart, they’ll bring out something with some serious style or other “wow” factor. How about a modern-day Imperial? Who cares that it’s a zillion miles long – it’s an EV, so the green cred is there. And if it doesn’t sell in numbers, fine – the point of the exercise is to get people excited about Chrysler again. Tesla did this with the Model S, and it worked for them.
Exciting styling doesn’t sell at all lately. It is good for publicity thou.
The lesson of Airflow was don’t take chances, so it kinda fits.
Ha
The guy in the miserable Toyota ad has a very punchable face. I’m never going to buy a Toyota just because of this annoying ad. I enjoy reading articles on TTAC but these annoying ads are going to give me an epileptic seizure and it’s just not worth it!
This isn’t the first time, and as I recall my request was to play the videos where they are embedded but not push it down to the right which is what d-bag sites do. TTAC responded and this was actually changed so the ad played as you scrolled but didn’t follow you. I see QA has become a lost art on the VerticalScope development team.
While on this subject, you TTAC/VS folks do realize this “read all comments” button is incredibly stupid, right? I have so many issues with it on Linux and some Windows machines, on GNU/Linux I think the scrip you fire in the “cdn-cgi” directory is either stuck in a loop or erroring (or something). Also having to click it over and over per post, I mean WTF. Can we have a cookie to just not run the script if we so choose? Maybe on weak cell phones loading all comments caused performance issues, hence the button, but c’mon people.
They should just have a dedicated mobile version and have the desktop go back to a usable version. Every time you place a comment you lose your space and have to start all over. Sucks, but everyone has complained since this version was implemented and they have never responded so I don’t see the issue resolved anytime soon. All I see is continued degradation of the user experience here.
“wearing Chrysler-ish clothes and appearing to be about the same size as the Ford Mach-E”
Because *that* has been such a success, let’s model ours after it; right Cialis?
Well, if a lazy moment turns into the right moment…
Seriously, the Mach-E has been a decent seller so far, particularly given all the supply issues. I guessed about 40,000 annual sales before the supply chain went to hell.
Unless October was somehow stellar, no it has not been. As of September it was on pace for 25K units by end of Q4 (USDM sales) and the sales of produced models have been 2:1 exported outside USDM (mostly to Europe) with roughly 2700 unsold units inside USDM (something like 40K units built since inception). I concluded Ford was playing shell games with inventory, trying to give the impression to some markets that it was a hot seller instead of just parking ten of them per dealer. There is a reason Ford stopped blowing itself after the summer and switched gears in its propaganda.
Well, tossing January out (there were none in stock), you have about 25,000 sales over 10 months, which gives us annual sales of 30,000 or so. And sales are trending upwards.
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/ford-mustang-mach-e-sales-figures/
Not a huge hit, but I didn’t think it would be, and I don’t think it has to be.
That’s interesting, a strong October and November coming after a really weak August and September. I wonder what the days inventory is at the moment and if it radically changed in October?
Unlike GM, Ford is historically fickle with the niche products and also rans. Given their investment in the infrastructure, I wonder how long they will keep it around if it never performs.
With all the supply chain issues I think it’s hard to get a bead on what’s selling, you know?
Either way, I think this is a decent performance from a brand with zero history building or selling EVs.
Ford had a fair amount of unsold product in September, my guess is it was excess summer production when summer USDM sales dropped off. If orders suddenly showed up in October they had a nice margin to fill the order demand waiting in a storage site. Would also be interesting to see export figures but GCBC doesn’t list European sales.
“brand with zero history building or selling EVs.”
Really only three do, Tesla, GM, and Nissan. I’m not sure its particularly relevant.
Well, yeah, Ford is a newbie to EVs, so this does make a difference. Tesla is the market leader, so it’s not really comparable, but the Mach-E is clearly outselling the Nissan and GM’s EVs (the Leaf and Bolt).
That indicates to me that a) the way to sell EVs is not to make dorky eco-mobiles and b) Ford’s doing something right.
Point A: Very much agree, amazing this wasn’t understood from the word go.
Point B: Not necessarily.
At the local Ford dealers to me regular Mustangs, escapes and Mach-es seem to be the most likley new stock. Everything else sold as soon as it rolls off the truck.
The new ad campaign; “Now you can buy a Chrysler without looking like you bought a Chrysler”.
Precisely, except no one knows what a Chrysler looks like because the brand’s been withering for the last 10 years.
They needed to do something with some razzle-dazzle.
@FreedMike: OK, you convinced me.
You are quite right that nobody knows what a Chrysler looks like. They have a chance to define the brand identity with this new vehicle.
Agree with Corey. Why in heaven’s name would you introduce perhaps the most important product in your brand’s history and saddle it with the name of one of the most unsuccessful models your brand ever offered? The original Airflow was unsuccessful because it was a radical design that was way ahead of it’s time. This “new” Airflow does not fall into that category at all. It’s rather bland and generic. They are not going to make Chrysler a viable brand again with a product that looks like this.
Your statements seems to be at odds with each other. The original failed because it was unconventional, the new one will fail because it is conventional?
Looking closely Pretty sure this is a Citroen C4 or C5 with some changed sheet metal (mostly in the back)
Yep, that was my thought too.
mach e could have been “EdsElectric
Polara, they should’ve named it Polara. If it seats about 20, I’ll bring my jukebox money.
Call and tell them.
I expected Airflow to have something in common with original Airflow. But that’s me. How many people know though about original Chrysler Airflow was. May be it would be better to start with Imperial full size SUV kind of thing?
What could it have in common with a car from that long ago? Not another one pining for an Imperial. What is the obsession with that name? It’s not going to happen.
Hybrid Imperial based on the Grand Wagoneer platform.
If this featureless, shapeless blob is all they can come up with they might as well kill Chrysler