No joke for Chrysler as Press pushes EVs

Wind the clocks back 12 months and things were looking good for Chrysler. Newly freed from the unhappy marriage with Daimler, the company was preparing for a positive future under the ownership of private venture company Cerberus.

But Chrysler has been hit hardest of all the US Big Three, and its Detroit Show presence was distinctly low-key. This was a far cry from last year, when the new Dodge Ram pick-up was launched with the accompaniment of a herd of cattle outside the Cobo Hall.

In a perhaps ill-advised reference to this event, Chrysler sales VP Jim Press joked that the cows hadn’t returned this year as they’d been summoned by the “cow czar” in Washington, who wanted to check that they’d travelled to Detroit in low-cost cattle trucks.

This reference to the US Senate’s complaints about Big Three executives travelling to Washington by private jet may have raised a chuckle from the assembled media, though it probably won’t go down too well on Capitol Hill. And as Chrysler still hopes to get its hands on a further $7bn of US Government loans, Press’s joke could backfire on the company.

Any further bailout is dependent on Chrysler coming up with a plan to cut costs – and Press said that was well under way. “We took out 250,000 units of production that was aimed at fleets, and that has improved residuals; dealer inventories have been cut and four model lines have been eliminated.”

In their place will come new electric vehicles developed by Chrysler’s ENVI environmental projects division. Several of these were unveiled at the show, including the Dodge Circuit electric coupe, based on the Lotus Europa platform, as well as an EV Jeep Patriot and a new mid-size Chrysler EV, the 200C.

More cuts are to follow, reducing volumes and workforce. “We learned a hell of a lot in 2008,” Press says. And in recognition of the fact that $4bn of US taxpayers’ money has already been pushed Chrysler’s way, Press ended his presentation with the memorable line: “We now have a special bond with the American public.”