As some of you may already have heard, Chrysler has staked its claim in the all green car market by announcing its plan to roll out a whole lineup of vehicles with electric only powertrains. It is comprised of an electric version of a Chrysler Minivan, Jeep Wrangler, and the Dodge EV. While the other two do have their merits, the EV was by far the most interesting one due to its proposed sportiness as well as the novelty of being its own car.

On first glance, I thought this car was rather similar to the Dodge Viper but I quickly realized that I was wrong – the shape of the front half of the car is definately Lotus inspired. This makes sense, as I would later find out, Dodge has decided to base the design of this car off the upcoming Lotus Europa. The light and nimble chassis produced by the British automaker must be just the thing for all these new electric cars, because the Tesla Roadster is based off another Lotus, the Elise.

Not a whole lot of details is known about this car at the moment but the rumored output of the electric powertrain is 250 horsepower and almost 500 ft-lbs of torque. Small roadsters like the EV don’t usually come with motors that can produce that amount of torque but electric motors are a completely different story – generating all their power right from the get go.  That amount of torque on tap should make accelerating out of a corner loads of fun – if you can maintain traction anyways.

The big question is if this idea will ever hit the streets – or be destined for the parts bin like another Dodge Roadster concept? We’ll just have to wait till the targeted release of MY 2010 to find out!