Fiat Chrysler’s new electric concept car is indeed a van aimed at millennial families. This morning, Chrysler gave out some more details about the Portal as part of the press days preceding CES 2017.
The “portal” of the name is a wide front and an interior that can be reconfigured according to the driver’s or passengers’ sense of personal space. It’s a forward-looking “third space” Chrysler predicts the car might utilize when autonomous driving allows people to work and socialize instead of driving themselves. Currently, the car’s sensors allow it to operate in a SAE Level Three semi-autonomous driving mode (autonomous driving in most situations with the option for the car to ask a driver to take control). Its suite of LIDAR, radar, sonar and vision sensors also allow for possible upgrades to Level Four in the future.
So, what’s so millennial about the Portal? For Chrysler, that means customization and connectivity. The seats can be moved around on tracks or folded up and removed entirely, while wide rear doors are designed to make reconfiguration easy. On the connectivity front, it includes an in-vehicle wireless network as well as plugs for devices.
Purely as an electric vehicle, the Portal is middle-of-the-road with 250 miles of range on a full charge. Chrysler also points out that the DC Fast Charge (350 kW) might be appealing for a family on the go, since it takes less than 20 minutes to charge to 150 miles of range. It’s certainly a different look at how to design for a self-driving car world, but we’ll have to wait and see whether it becomes more than a concept.