{"id":806,"date":"2019-11-19T11:11:40","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T16:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/?p=806"},"modified":"2019-11-19T11:11:40","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T16:11:40","slug":"new-mach-e-shows-why-fca-had-to-join-psa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/2019\/11\/new-mach-e-shows-why-fca-had-to-join-psa\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mach-E shows why FCA had to join PSA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Serious sports cars of the future will be electrically powered.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a new thought. Tesla, if nothing else, proved that gasoline engines were on the way out for high-end cars. Dodge, often the most innovative muscle-car maker, did its best with the relatively low-buck, insanely high-horsepower Hellcat series. The original 707-horse Hellcats held their own with Teslas on the track, but with Volkswagen\/Audi\/Porsche, Jaguar, GM, Ford, and others all redoubling their electric-car efforts, the writing was already on the wall. A moderately decent Hellcat driver could be outrun by a good Tesla driver.<\/p>\n

\"Ford<\/a><\/p>\n

Dodge countered with cars such as the Demon (840 hp on race fuel) and Redeye (797 hp), but the electrics are also getting faster as time goes on. There are literally dozens of promising research projects on lighter, cheaper replacements for today\u2019s lithium-ion batteries, and the cost of renewable electricity has been plummeting\u2014even beyond the low cost of fracked natural gas.<\/p>\n

Now, the Mach-E, Ford\u2019s first electric car (or crossover), is grabbing headlines, and for all the right reasons. It\u2019s fast, practical, comfortable, and priced within the Hellcat range.<\/p>\n

The problem over at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is time. They jumped ahead with the Pacifica plug-in hybrid, but have yet to do the kind of performance-driven electric car needed by Maserati, Alfa Romeo, and the now-independent-but-still-related Ferrari. FCA has all sorts of electrified cars in development, on both sides of the Atlantic, but the work appears to be going very slowly, and leaks to the public indicate that work is well behind schedule.<\/p>\n

FCA had overcome its original problems of profitability and lack of cash; but now it has found another problem, in addition to the dead-end street of niche marketing (where chassis and bodies can\u2019t really be shared between its many brands, because each brand is in a different niche). PSA (Peugeot\/Citro\u00ebn), on the other hand, has more advanced expertise in hybridization at least, as well as a better reputation for quality than either FCA or Renault. What\u2019s more, the one area where FCA is clearly over-represented, large-engined vehicles\u2014albatrosses, to a large degree, at a time when fuel economy standards are increasing\u2014is where PSA literally has nothing. Ram, Jeep, and Dodge are all completely new markets for PSA, not to mention Maserati and Alfa Romeo sitting where DS wants to be.<\/p>\n

The future is electric, and by merging with PSA, Fiat Chrysler may be able to see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Serious sports cars of the future will be electrically powered. It\u2019s not a new thought. Tesla, if nothing else, proved that gasoline engines were on the way out for high-end cars. Dodge, often the most innovative muscle-car maker, did its best with the relatively low-buck, insanely high-horsepower Hellcat series. The original 707-horse Hellcats held their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,9,2,6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/mach-e.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.autobison.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}