Great for small schoolbuses. And for anyone with more than 5 children (we need imigration, and the best imigration is from within).

Abraham -

the Sprinter is a delivery van. It has no second row of seats nor any windows behind the B-pillar. Pity the children who would get thrown in the back.

On the upside, the weight of those batteries should help lower the center of gravity quite a bit. Depending on where they put them, it should also help weight distribution - just in case you want to go around corners really, really fast (relatively speaking). If you're a pedestrian, that Dodge Sprinter could quickly become a case of dodge-the-Sprinter. But heck, at least the pizza will be there in less than 30 minutes, right?

Rafael:
Sprinter is offered with more seata and windows.
http://www.dodge.com/en/sprinter/features/passenger.html

My generation tried the only two children idea and so did Europe. We both have illegal immigration problems since business craves cheap labor.
They do jobs "no american wants" because the pay is low. Without the illegals the wages would go up, or they will invent a machine to do it. Econ 101.

The D's want voters and the R's want cheap labor.
PS You do not have to round up 12 million, just stop employing them. They will go home. Or let in more legals, the line to get in is long from all over the world, not just the walkers.

This medium size Sprinter van/bus would sell well in some areas of Canada and may be just large enough for our new enlarged families:

Some provinces plan to promote larger families with $100/week per child not attending the government subsidised $7/day day care nurseries + a Federal encouragement grant of $100/month per child (up to 18 years old) + up to $1500/month per unemployed unwed single mothers.

One of our neighbour arrived with his four ladies and many children. He quickly declared one as his official wife (to satify Canadian laws) and the other three as unemployed, unwed, single mothers to get the extra $4500/month. There are no real limits on the number of unwed single mothers under the same roof. If your house is large enough and your heart is strong enough you may keep many more to increase your total revenues. Every lady must have at least one child to qualify for the $1500/month grant.

Eventually, two or three extended wheelbase Sprinters may be required to take the children to school, but again, free school buses are available everywhere. Home schooling is allowed and two or three of the ladies may even get paid as home based teachers. (part-time only, less than 15 hours/week, not to lose the $1500 grant)

Our extremely low birth rate (1.22) has already gone up to (1.60 in 2006) and should reach the objective of (2.10+) whithin a few more years, or as long the government surpluses last. Five to ten $$ per tar sand oil barrel could keep this wonderful program going for years.

Let's hope that our neighbours will keep driving more and more gas guzzlers. Otherwise our new enlarged families may suffer.

Why a van. These are commercial vehicles used for several hours per day. Thewy can be charged up at night and within 30 minutes they're using their diesel as a standard hybrid.

Surely the initial target market for hybrids is small second cars that rarely do more than 15 miles per day.

fred

reason for a v6 (other than more power) is that they are easier to balance for greater reliability, power, torque, etc. the odd number of cylinders in a 5 cylinder causes issues with balance and requires extra parts to counteract the wierdness of odd-number of cylinders. why is a 3-cylinder a decent engine, then? because it's smaller, frankly. smaller, and therefore easier to repair. also, the v6 saves the need for retooling factories to build the rare 5 cylinder motors.

my opinion: i'm completely in agreement. why v6? they could just as well go with a slightly larger than usual i4, couldn't they? or even like the Volt, power the wheels with electricity, and power the motor with some kind of fuel.