General

Chrysler kills its electric car

The automaker’s much-hyped, expensive Envi program has been shelved

Chrysler has scrapped its electric car program—the same one it was promoting so heavily while it was seeking US$12.5 billion in government bailouts. As recently as last January, Chrysler was saying it would have 500,000 of its Envi electric cars on the road by 2013. Now, it has disbanded the team of engineers that was working on the program. Chrysler is also the only one of the six big auto makers in the U.S. that does not offer a hybrid car. While the move is sure to raise some public ire, Chrysler’s decision may not be so bad strategically. Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Fiat (Chrysler’s new partner), recently said electric cars will represent less than 2 per cent of Chrysler’s sales by 2014. In other words, they won’t be the solution to the company’s financial woes, nor will they play an important part in the company’s difficult road to recovery.

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