Citing sources who requested not to be identified, Bloomberg reports that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will bring a fully electric car to the Consumer Electronics Show in January. The move is odd, considering FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne has been adamant in saying he doesn’t believe electric cars are the future.
The sources requested anonymity due to FCA’s plans being private in nature, according to Bloomberg. Sources said the vehicle will be based off of the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, which already has a plug-in-hybrid version. FCA declined to comment on the matter, according to Bloomberg.
Bloomberg also reports that the sources said FCA is working on an electric Maserati in order to compete with Tesla, which Maserati engineering boss Roberto Fedeli confirmed back in October. Fedeli said the orders to create an electric Maserati, which the manufacturer expects to show off by 2020, came from parent company FCA. The only thing different in Fedeli’s account is that the car isn’t meant to be a Tesla competitor—Fedeli said Tesla is “not the best” and that making a direct competitor to the company wouldn’t be a good idea.
In the case of Maserati’s 2020 goal, we already knew that FCA was slowly catching up in the realm of electric cars—even if Marchionne said back in June that the “answer [to future cars] is bound to be somewhere else” and not in electrification. Marchionne also said he doesn’t believe there will be profit in electric cars for the next several years, according to Bloomberg.
But if an electric Pacifica does make it to CES, perhaps FCA finds some value in electrification before the next decade begins.