Chrysler's electric cars and rail safety: Ramping up, Sept. 24

Chrysler goes electric: The year 2010 is shaping up to be an interesting one on the clean car front. Chevrolet formally introduced its Volt electric car last week, indicating at least some of the plug-in electric cars will be on the market in two years. On Tuesday, Chrysler -- which has been silent on the issue of electric cars -- unveiled three of them (shown above) and said it will have one on the market by 2010, too. Funny what a little competition will do, eh? The vehicles have small gasoline engines that are used to generate more electricity to power the car. Chrysler, you may recall, is one of the companies seeking $25 billion in federal loans -- go ahead, call it a bailout -- to help create more efficient cars after years of producing gas guzzlers. The Times' Up to Speed blog has all the details.

Rail safety: The House and Senate have agreed on a compromise rail safety bill that would require railroads to install anti-braking devices by 2015 and would curtail the number of hours an engineer could work each month to 276 hours. The House may vote today. This month's Metrolink crash spurred action on the bill, which had been stalled.

On the subject of Metrolink: The Twitter updates the agency sends to commuters are fascinating -- it allows you to see how often the trains break down. And yesterday was not a good day. The early afternoon train to Ventura County was terminated in Burbank for mechanical reasons and a later train to O.C. was also canceled for similar reasons. 

--Steve Hymon

photo: Chrysler

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