Chrysler Reveals Electric Minivan for USPS

by Benjamin Jones on April 22, 2009

USPS Chrysler ENVI Electric Minivan

In case you’ve forgotten what day it is today, it’s Earth Day! To celebrate, Chrysler is showing off its electric minivan in United States Postal Service colors. Along with the nice paint jobs, Chrysler has announced that it will apply for the Department of Energy’s Transportation Electrification stimulus program alongside the USPS.

As Chrysler likes to point out, they invented the minivan back in the 1980s and still have a large market share in that segment. Now, Chrysler is trying to reinvent the minivan by taking the often stereotyped “mommy-mobile” and turning it into a posterchild for personal electric transportation.

Though you may rarely see them, there are more than 10,000 of Chrysler’s minivans in the service of the USPS, which gives both Chrysler and the USPS a good entrypoint for phasing these electric vehicles into service.

Source: Chrysler

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{ 4 comments }

1 Jon W. April 22, 2009 at 10:52 pm

Wow, this announcement makes it feel like 1993 all over again after reading “The Car that Could”. These are the same schenanigans they were pulling back then. There is nothing new here.

2 Benjamin Jones April 22, 2009 at 11:03 pm

While I agree that there’s not much new about this, I’m not so sure how much of this is vaporware. The electric backbone for this car is the same shared platform that will go into the Dodge Circuit for next year and very well might make it into the real world.

Sure, Chrysler might go under, but that doesn’t mean their efforts are not genuine.

Thanks for the comment, Jon!

3 Randy May 31, 2009 at 11:30 pm

We will be on the cutting edge of having any new vehicle lines available. As we are a Dodge, Chrysler Jeep Sprinter and Viper and number 1 in sales and servie in our area, we will also be one of the first to stock and make available any electric vehicles, consumer or commercial. We were one of the first to get a Aspen Hybrid in. Even though this model did not do well, we fully supported and will the new productws coming along. You can visit our site at http://dickscountrydodge.com for updates. These will come and we will have them.

4 car July 6, 2010 at 6:55 am

That’s pretty awesome. It’s nice to see companies upgrading =)

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