Batteries for electric cars, as it turns out, are a lot harder to acquire than batteries for say, toys. That’s a problem when you’re a company like Chrysler, which intends to turn out a slew of mass production electric vehicles in 2010. Today, at a day long conference about new developments in batteries put on by GE Research, the president of Chrysler’s ENVI (ENvironmental New Vehicles, of course) division revealed how he’d do it. Chrysler, he said, will build the battery plants.
“Automotive grade batteries today really are non existent,” Lou Rhodes told the crowd of engineers and executives gathered at GE's sprawling research center in Niskayuna, N.Y. In a tent outside, the company had parked an electric vehicle from 1914. “So we have to commit to building the infrastructure. We have the opportunity to look globally and determine the best location to do that. Personally we’d like to be able to do some of that in the United States.” Other things that Chrysler is going to have to build, Rhodes added, were electric motors and power electronics.
In a growth industry, that sort of investment wouldn’t be a problem. But this is not a growth industry and Chrysler is feeling the brunt of it. PricewaterhouseCoopers sent out a note today forecasting no growth in the auto sector before 2010 and estimating that Chrysler’s vehicle production would shrink 7% a year from its 2007 output – the only manufacturer to go negative.
Is Cerberus – the private equity firm that owns Chrysler – committed to the EV outlays? What about possible Chrysler-acquirer GM? Rhodes said he expects everything in his division to keep moving forward: “The need to electrify the fleet, the need to address consumer wants and needs, the need to address regulatory and climate change is certainly not going away because Chrysler is in the headlines this week. It’s a high priority at Chrysler. It will continue to be a high priority at Chrysler.”
