Chrysler-Fiat chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne has never seemed too excited when speaking of electrified vehicles. Sometimes, people don’t change; they’re dragged kicking and screaming into the new reality.
CEO Marchionne recently told Automotive News that Chrysler is left with no choice but to build more hybrid vehicles in the future. This, according to Marchionne, will be necessary for Chrysler to comply with the 54.5 mpg fuel economy standards proposed for 2025.
Right now, Chrysler has a single conventional hybrid in the works: a gas-electric version of the 300 due in 2013. That’s not enough, as even Marchionne, a hybrid skeptic, admits. He says, in a passive, non-enthusiastic way, that more gas-electric Chrysler and Dodge vehicles will show up sometime in the future: “I have no other way of getting to 2025 [CAFE] numbers than by going to hybrids.”
