Last November, Sergio Marchionne and his lieutenants spent a long day laying out the details of their plans for a new Chrysler that would compete on all fronts, including cars that would challenge the coming plug-in offerings from around the world. Since then, an EV version of the Fiat 500 has made the round of auto shows (and set to go on sale in 2012) and they've announced a government grant-funded test fleet of plug-in Ram pickups due out next year. And, of course, the company still sells the best-selling EV in the world, the GEM (full disclosure, a former Mightycomm client). Other than that, the company has been silent on plug-in vehicle plans while it struggles to right its balance sheets and bring new volume product to market.

At the Detroit Green Car Conference last week Chrysler's senior vice president for powertrain Paulo Ferrero might have been expected to elaborate on the company's strategy for electrification, since other speakers from Nissan, BMW and Think would be talking about their companies' EV strategies that were already being implemented. His presentation did include a slide or two on plug-ins, but with no new information other than a commitment to "develop a range of technologies for hybrid/electrification across various platforms." Pretty vague and clearly not a commitment to deliver vehicles on a timeline in sync with the competition.

Ferrero's big surprise -- natural gas vehicles! Turns out Fiat has CNG powertrains in a full range of vehicles already in Europe (where government incentives and utility support make them an attractive option) and they might find their way over here -- along with multi-air engines and a variety of improvements to the engines and transmissions that promise to deliver a 25% overall fleet average fuel economy improvement for Chrysler's fleet by 2014. 

This article also was published at plugincars.com. See www.plugincars.com/chrysler-has-EV-plan-it-says-so-42296.html