Ever feel like a sucker? Well right now, you should. After taking billions in bailout loans from the Federal Government, promising a half-million electric cars on the road by 2013 and even going so as establishing an electric vehicles program, Fiat-owned Chrysler has renegged on pretty much all of its electric car promises after axing the ENVI program.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who saw Chrysler’s revised vehicle lineup last week, but it still feels like a kick in the gut.

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Yesterday, Chrysler/Fiat’s new CEO Sergio Marchionne presented the 5-year business plan he hopes will save Chrysler, and bring Fiat back to the US market for the first time in nearly 30 years. The company presented its plan during a live, seven-hour-long marathon webcast, which was notable for two things: first, a virtually unprecedented willingness to discuss future product, and, second, the conspicuous absence of New Chrysler’s much-ballyhooed ENVI electric-vehicle division.

What happened to the Dodge EV? Can we expect some innovative green tech from Marchionne’s new Dodge product future? The depressing reality, after the jump.

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Chrysler is arguably in the toughest shape of the Big Three Detroit automakers, both financially and with its future lineup. You can point plenty of fingers at reasons why, including the lack of effective, fuel efficient vehicles, but Chrysler was once considered the most innovative of the big three, always thinking big while breaking the bank.

One little-known car from the annals of the Auburn Hills automaker is the Patriot, a purpose built hybrid electric race car that was to use turbines and natural gas to achieve purported speeds of 200 mph.

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Most every major auto manufacturer has announced plans for some sort of electric or electric-hybrid production model for future production, but to date there are still only a handful of hybrid models on the road.

A few months ago in keeping with trends, Chrysler unveiled the Dodge Circuit, a Lotus Europa-based electric car that would be faster than an SRT-8 Challenger while running purely on electric power. But that was before Chrysler declared bankruptcy, and now word has come through the grapevine that the Circuit may already be dead, even after Chrysler published an ad a few weeks ago about “A new car company” which predominately featured the Circuit.

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While domestic manufacturers have in recent years returned to the “retro” look, reigniting the nation’s passion for the muscle cars of yesteryear, the rest of the world has been giddy on egg-shaped hybrids and fuel efficiency vs horsepower.

There is an understandably large gap between the fuel-conscious and horsepower heavy crowds, but Popular Mechanics has undertaken a project to bridge that with their Eco+Muscle hybrid Dodge Challenger.

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This has been a Lotus/Chrysler-heavy blog in the past few days, but let’s face it: if you’re talking advanced automotive technology and lightweight engineering, you’re talking about Lotus Cars - and if you’re talking highly-anticipated new electric vehicles at Detroit’s 2009 NAIAS auto show, you’re talking about Chrysler’s ENVI electric-vehicle program.

The car shown above is the Dodge Circuit, which Chrysler promised would be a real step forward from the concept Dodge EV they showed last summer (a UK-only Lotus Europa powered by a 200 kW electric motor that Dodge painted yellow and decorated with cheap vinyl stickers).  I won’t keep you in suspense:  it ain’t.

More - including Chrysler’s official press release and some official photography - after the jump.

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Despite a solid PR launch of Chrysler’s ENVI electric vehicle group, the current Dodge EV is little more than UK-only Lotus Europa with Dodge badges and fly-yellow paint.  This new concept, however, promises to be something more.

From Automotive News:

The Dodge EV shown in September was a Lotus-derived electric sports car. Look for the show version to have more Dodge styling cues and possibly be a four-passenger coupe.

Reading between the lines a bit, then, what can we expect from Chrysler?

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Envied worldwide for producing feather-lite supercars just itching to be made into electric torque monsters (even Tesla has borrowed heavily from the Lotus parts bin), Lotus has indicated it wants to enter the world of exotic electric cars itself - perhaps even as soon as late 2009.

Ever since the late Colin Chapman began building his own sportscars under the Lotus brand (way back in 1952!) the company has followed a simple philosophy for its go-fast racers: add lightness.  “Adding lightness” meant that Chapman’s cars were incredibly efficient - using less fuel and fewer tires than the competition.

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New diesels will get better mileage and have cleaner emissions than your average car. Pictured above: 2009 Jetta SportWagen 2L TDI Clean Diesel.

Later this year (see the timeline below), we will finally begin to see an influx of new model diesels in the United States. While diesels make up 50% of the market share of vehicles in Europe, they’re still trying to shrug off the stigma of being dirty, noisy beasts here in the US. So what changed?

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