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Stellantis Has "Disbanded" The Street & Racing Technology (SRT) Division:

Stellantis Has “Disbanded” The Street & Racing Technology (SRT) Division:​

Group Will Now Be Able To Work On All Stellantis Vehicles...​


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Has the Street & Racing Technology (SRT) division been disbanded? Over the past week, several websites have been stating that the newly formed Stellantis group has done just that. While Stellantis itself has been quiet about the ordeal, we decided to reach out to their communications team for a real answer to what is going … (read full article...)

 
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AlexB

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I never saw that particular video. When Fiat stepped into the picture in 2009, Chrysler was desperately short of engineering and development staff. ENVI was really a luxury they couldn't afford at the time.

Here is some history from around the time of ENVI. There were some problems with EV development in those years, which weren't really the fault of the ENVI group. The battery vendor was supposed to be A123. If Chrysler stayed tied to A123 this would have hamstrung the company. GM was building the hybrid transmissions for the Dodge Durango, Chrysler Aspen Hemi hybrids and the experimental Ram 1500 PHEV. I forget how many of the Ram plugins were built, I think it was around 150, all of them for a Department of Energy project. The problem was GM was gouging Chrysler for the transmission prices. Production at that time would have been unrealistic, because the retail sales would have been dismal.

The Ram PHEV program was fruitful both for FCA and the DOE. For all the Sergio Marchionne bashing by the media pundits about his disbanding ENVI and later saying "don't buy a Fiat 500e because we lose money on them", a surprising amount of what we now know about networked EV charging has come from that joint FCA-DOE program. Most of the program happened after the disbanding of ENVI, so hindsight justifies Sergio's decisions. Just because FCA wasn't retailing electrified vehicles, doesn't mean the company wasn't staying up to date on the technology. The strategy is to step into plugin sales when the market is ready. The market is heavily influenced by both battery prices and the availability of charging stations. This is why Europe gets this technology first.

Not counting the mild hybrid BSG systems, the current electrified vehicles from Auburn Hills are the Chrysler Pacifica PHEV and the Jeep Wrangler PHEV. Much of the rear drive based hybrids from the Jeep Wrangler going forward will use ZF mechanicals. The e-Flite in the Pacifica PHEV predates ENVI. That particular transmission is based on expired TRW patents. TRW management started researching hybrids following the 1956 Suez Crisis. They were some of the very few Americans who read the tea leaves correctly. Europe, meanwhile, felt the pain at the pump right away. We know the story about TRW because after the introduction of the Pacifica Hybrid, Toyota sued Chrysler for infringing on their hybrid patents. Chrysler showed their hand, and some of the Chrysler patents came out of Highland Park. That was some time ago. ENVI initiated 25 PHEV minivans as part of the DOE project using a GM supplied transaxle. GM proved to be an unreliable partner, so the production version of the Pacifica PHEV uses a transaxle of Chrysler design, based off those old patents.

There were 3 different plugin minivan designs which originated from ENVI. There was a range extended EV using a two cylinder IC range extender. There was also a battery electric cargo van intended for production for the Post Office. Then there were the 25 minivans for the DOE, I believe these used the 4.0 V6 with a GM supplied front drive hybrid transaxle. I think all the vehicles were Chrysler Town & Country models, but I might be wrong about that.

I don't know much about the recently introduced plugin hybrid Jeeps which are front drive based. That is for somebody who knows the details much better than I do.
I find your post @patfromigh highly relevant which the Stockholder meeting:1618617121627.png
 

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