Chrysler (again) works to design itself a miracle

"Their latest products have missed the mark by a wide margin," says David Champion, director of automobile testing for Consumer Reports. "They don't really have anything going for them."

And though electric-car making was an open field only two years ago, today there is fierce competition. "How is Chrysler going to maintain any advantage when the battery manufacturers are going to be selling to all the automakers?" asks Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland. "Are they going to be able to leapfrog Toyota and GM? I don't think so."

Then there's the matter of cost. As the electric sports-car maker Tesla has demonstrated, it's relatively easy to build an all-electric vehicle and charge $100,000 for it; to even approach cost compatibility with conventional gas-powered vehicles, the batteries will have to be a lot cheaper. Chrysler and all electric carmakers will also have to essentially redefine buyers' notions of the cost of ownership. That means marketing. That means money.

Maybe the hole is too deep. Maybe the ENVI program is about making Chrysler attractive to the next corporate buyer rather than the current owner, investment group Cerberus. Maybe the Lazarus of car companies is out of miracles.

"All I know is that we've been here before and we can do it again," says Quigley. Everything that he's asked the board for, money or company resources, has been "turned on."

"If I were living in my own little cave, I wouldn't know that anything has changed."

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d an.neil@latimes.com