AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- The Dodge ESX3 test car offers the interior space and many of the creature comforts found in DaimlerChrysler's other midsize sedans, with one exception -- it gets 72 miles per gallon of gasoline.
But if Chrysler built it today, it would cost $7,500 more than the Dodge Intrepid, which usually runs about $21,000.That's far more than buyers would be willing to pay for high fuel economy, say the Chrysler engineers who built the car as part of a federal program to develop high-mileage vehicles. So engineers have set a new target of making such cars affordable, rather than squeezing out even more fuel economy.
"This is fascinating technology," said Bernard Robertson, DaimlerChrysler's senior vice president for engineering technologies. "But it's no good to do a really slick vehicle in a sexy body nobody buys."
Robertson said Chrysler chose not to try to hit the 80 mpg goal set by the federal Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, but to come close with a car that looked and operated as much like an everyday vehicle as possible. As a result, the ESX3 has fewer far-out features than vehicles built by Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. under PNGV.
One big example: Where Ford's Prodigy and GM's Precept use aluminum for exterior sheet metal to save weight, the ESX3 is made mostly of plastic. Robertson says the plastic not only cuts building costs but helps save energy. It's a better insulator than metal, meaning the car won't get as hot on summer days. An exhaust fan blows hot air out while the car's parked, reducing the amount of power-sapping air conditioning needed.
The ESX3 gets its power from a small three-cylinder diesel engine mated to an electric motor driving the front wheels. The electric motor captures energy used in braking, storing it in a battery pack in the trunk. By weighing about 1,200 pounds less than the similarly sized Dodge Intrepid sedan, the ESX3 gets about 80 mpg of diesel fuel, the equivalent of 72 mpg of gasoline.
Robertson said the price premium had come down from $60,000 when the PNGV program started to $15,000 for the ESX2, introduced two years ago. Chrysler has come out in favor of a proposed $2,000 federal tax credit for hybrid vehicles of all kinds, saying such a credit could increase the economy of large sport utility vehicles.
"By improving the fuel economy on a Dodge Durango, you save a lot more fuel than you do in a Neon," he said.
PNGV began in 1994 as a 10-year joint effort by automakers and the federal government to design and build a prototype five-passenger, midsize sedan that gets 80 mpg without compromising passenger needs.
Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler will spend $980 million of their own funds this year on their PNGV projects.