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Faced with a banknote crisis as its sales abide to lag able-bodied abaft its convalescent rivals, Chrysler has reportedly disbanded a high-profile engineering aggregation that had been developing a calendar of electric vehicles.

Reuters reports, “The move by Fiat SpA marks a above changeabout for Chrysler, which had acclimated its electric car affairs as allotment of the case for a $12.5 billion federal aid package.”

The ENVI analysis aggregation had apparent prototypes of four electric cars to associates of the press, and to associates of President Obama’s auto industry assignment force, as afresh as endure spring. The four included several alleged Extended-Range Electric Cars – electric cars that backpack an onboard gasoline-powered architect to recharge their batteries in motion if necessary. Journalists acquire apparent alive examples of an E-REV minivan, an E-REV midsize car and an E-REV copy of the Jeep Wrangler, while a high-performance electric sports car was reportedly headed for assembly for the 2010 archetypal year.

As afresh as August, Reuters notes, Chrysler “took $70 actor in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy to advance a analysis agile of 220 amalgam auto trucks and minivans, cars now scrapped in the across-the-board turnaround plan for Chrysler arise this anniversary by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne.”

In a contempo presentation analogue the company’s approaching artefact plans, Autoblog notes, “Marchionne said …that electric cars are still a actual boxy hypothesis with accepted array technology. In fact, the automaker expects that beneath than two percent of its calendar will be electric by 2014, which would bulk to beneath than 60,000 cars per year.”

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