Chrysler town and country

Battery-powered vehicles aren’t selling well July 3, 2009 Print Less than a month after stripping 789 dealers of their franchises, Chrysler now wants to stop selling its Global Electric Motorcars, known as GEMs, at 64 of 150 dealerships, according to a filing in U.S.
Bankruptcy Court this week. DaimlerChrysler bought the Fargo, N.D., manufacturer of low-speed neighborhood electric vehicles in 2000. GEM now offers six models, each powered by six 12-volt batteries. They are legal to operate in any urban or controlled traffic setting at up to 35 m.p.h. At a July 16 hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez, Chrysler is to argue that it should be able to reject 64 dealership agreements for the battery-powered vehicles. In the filing, Chrysler claims that 26 GEM dealers have closed or are "winding down their operations." "Many of the rejected GEM dealers failed to sell more than a handful of GEM cars in the past 12 to 24 months or longer," Chrysler’s lead bankruptcy attorney Corinne Ball writes.

"The debtors" (Chrysler) "have determined that the GEM dealership agreements are neither necessary nor valuable to their estates and should be rejected." A Chrysler spokesman declined to say how many GEMs have been sold this year or in 2008.
A GEM official in North Dakota did not return a telephone call. The company’s Web site says about 38,000 GEM vehicles are on the road. They cost $8,340 to $14,200, according to the Web site. "We were a very inactive GEM dealer," said Greg Stonerock, general manager of Taylor Motors in Athens, Ohio. "We sold a few to" Ohio University "and to the city for meter maids. I can’t say it was a big moneymaker." At the same July 16 hearing, Chrysler and several state attorneys general are to ask Gonzalez to establish a clear process for determining what Chrysler may owe for about 1,350 claims filed under various states’ lemon laws before the automaker’s April 30 bankruptcy filing.