Town & Country Plug-in Hybrid
In September 2008, Chrysler unveiled a plug-in hybrid version of the Town & Country along with similarly engineered 4-door Jeep Wrangler and a purely electric sports car. The Town & Country prototype had an all-electric range of 40-mile (64 km) before gasoline starts. However, in November 2009 Fiat SpA disbanded Chrysler's ENVI electric car division and dropped these models from future product plans.
A two-year demonstration program with 25 flexible-fuel plug-in minivans began in April 2012. The first Town and Country were delivered in Auburn Hills, Michigan and Charlotte, North Carolina. The US$26-million demonstration project is partially financed by a US$10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The plug-in hybrid minivans are equipped with an E85-compatible 3.6-liter Pentastar engine mated to a front-wheel-drive, with two-mode hybrid transmission. The plug-in hybrid is powered by a liquid-cooled 12.1 KWh lithium-ion battery that delivers a total output of 290 horsepower. The total vehicle range is 700 mi (1,100 km).
In September 2012 Chrysler temporarily suspended the demonstration program. All 109 Dodge Ram 1500 Plug-in Hybrids and 23 Chrysler Town & Country plug-in hybrids deployed by the program were recalled due to damage sustained by three separate pickup trucks when their 12.9 kWh battery packs overheated. The carmaker plans to upgrade the battery packs with cells that use a different lithium-ion chemistry before the vehicles go back on service. Chrysler explained that no one was injured from any of the incidents, and the vehicles were not occupied at the time, nor any of the minivans were involved in any incident, but they were withdrawn as a precaution. The demonstration is a program jointly funded by Chrysler and the U.S. Department of Energy that includes the first-ever factory-produced vehicles capable of reverse power flow. The experimental system would allow fleet operators to use their plug-in hybrids to supply electricity for a building during a power outage, reduce power usage when electric rates are high or even sell electricity back to their utility company. The company reported that the demonstration fleet had collectively accumulated 1.3 million miles (2.1 million km) before the vehicles were recalled. Chrysler also reported that the plug-in pickups delivered peak average fuel economy of 37.4 mpg (6.29 L/100 km; 44.9 mpg), while the plug-in hybrid minivans delivered 55.0 mpg (4.28 L/100 km; 66.1 mpg).
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“These are not dark days: these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived.”
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965)