Fiat News: Fiat Expects To Lose $10,000 On Every 500e Sold

[William Maley]

By William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

April 22, 2013

Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne disclosed during a speech at SAE World Congress in Detroit last week that for every Fiat 500e sold, the company expects to lose around $10,000.

“For every 500 electric that we produce even after all the subsidies we will lose about $10,000 bucks a car. Doing that on a large scale would be masochism to the extreme,” Marchionne said.

Marchionne disclosed the figure to make a point. He believes that electric vehicles won’t be enough for automakers to meet the new ambitious fuel economy regulations set for 2025 by the U.S. Government. The regulations say automakers have to reach a fleet average of 35.5 MPG by 2016 and then reach an average of 54.5 MPG by 2025. Automakers can earn government credits, which help get an automaker closer to the average, by building hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles. Marchionne sees this as a problem since the Government is saying hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles are the only solution to this problem.

“A number of governments around the world including the U.S. have provided incentives for consumers to purchase plug-in electric vehicles and have provided direct incentives to manufacturers.My fear is that regulators are rushing precipitously into embracing electric vehicles as the only technological solution,” Marchionne said.

Instead, Marchionne is urging for “technological neutral” regulation should be encouraged.

Source: Detroit Free Press

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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[G. David Felt]

The whole subsidy for electric cars is a joke. Electric cars are no where ready for mass transit, road trips, etc. Even with building a so called electric highway as they did in washington, Oregon and california with I5 having all these level 1-3 chargers, you still have excess days to get from state to state. You cannot go from say seattle to redding california in 1 day with an electric car.

We should stop wasting millions on these charging stations and electric car purchases as we are only wasting tax dollars and burdening the future with debt and interest for the few that actually drive them.

If they want to get greener, then they should put these subsidy in CNG as a logical next step away from Petrol.

[Drew Dowdell]

Where is the diesel 500?

[G. David Felt]

Very true, I would think a 1L diesel should clearly give them a huge boost in mileage.

[Drew Dowdell]

They have a 1.3 liter diesel with 94 horsepower and 150 lb-ft of torque at 1500rpm that apparently would get 60mpg US.

[G. David Felt]

That makes more sense than the E version of the car.

[ocnblu]

It is high time to unplug some microphones and listen to what real people want.

[dwightlooi]

It's not whether electric cars are ready for the road. It's that there is no economic need to go electric at this juncture where fossil fuel is still the best source of portable energy -- best meaning most available, economical and storable. The entire push to go "green" with electric cars, wind power and solar is completely misguided. It is misguided for three reasons...

The first being that there is no economic need to do so for another 50 years, perhaps longer. Gas has to be in the neighborhood of $20 a gallon in 2012 dollars for the alternatives to make economic sense. And, oil is not disappearing fast. In fact, the USA has more reserves than the entire middle east combined and the USA and Canada has more than the rest of the world combined if only will explore, extract and refine. In fact, the maturing of mining and refining of tar sands has completely redefined the energy map of the planet. But, when 95% of federal lands is off limits to exploration and extraction, when we chase all the oil rigs off the gulf to brazil and elsewhere, when we haven't built a new refinery in over 30 years and when Canda wants to sell us their oil if only we'll built a pipeline to get it to where our refineries are we said "NO", our problem is not energy supply it's people that needs to be thrown out of Congress and the White House.

The second being the "environmental" justification for the drive towards electrification. Nobody is for dirty air hand water here, but CO2 is not a pollutant of any consequence, it is not a problem and it should not be controlled or restricted. All the emissions mankind has made since the beginning of the industrial age has not made a statistical dent in the climate of this planet. We don't have a warming problem (in fact we are cooling right now) and all the fluctuations in past 200 years is not abnormal compared to what has historically been the case in interglacial times in the planet's history. Global warming, climate change and the targeting of carbon emissions this the biggest scam in the history of climate science and it is about time we tell the Europeans that they are idiots and that we will not regulate or control carbon emissions. And, that if they want to dig their own economic graves they can go ahead and we'll use all the cheap energy they don't want.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, is the claim that all this rubbish is going to create jobs. Well, when in history has forcing higher energy prices and operating costs on an economy ever netted any jobs? Sure, you gain a few wind mill technician jobs and a few solar salesmen jobs. But you lose entire factories and industries who relocate to states and countries where there is cheap power and no cap-n-trade.

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Now... having said all that. I am not oblivious to the fact that fossil fuel is finite. And, that at some point of time in the future -- perhaps 50 or 100 years from now -- electric propulsion, grid distribution and and battery storage will be the best solution for the resources and economics of that time. But that day is not today, it is not next year or even 20 years from now. And, before we get there, we need to also realize that electricity is not an energy source -- it needs to be generated from something somewhere. Right now, 90% of it comes from burning fossil fuel anyway. And, wind, solar and hydroelectric -- exploited to their fullest -- cannot ever account for more than about 15~25% of today's needs much less tomorrows. So, before you go electric you need the capacity to generate it from something other than fossil fuels. That means Nuclear Power. Until you are ready to talk about 500 new reactors for the America you are not ready to talk about electrifying the economy. Also, if you make so much more power you need to move all that from the powerplant to the socket. This means increasing the capacity of our grid by a factor of three to four. So until you are willing to talk about a massive power lines and substation construction program, you are not ready to talk about electrification of the economy. These are all serious questions and they need serious, committed answers! Why are we talking about windmills, carbon credits and giving $6000 of taxpayer dollars to people who want to try the novelty of an electric car?