Chrysler Airflow Concept at the Chicago Auto Show

First shown to the world at the 2022 New York International Auto Show, this Chrysler Airflow Graphite Concept sets the stage for the future of the brand.

Chrysler is an interesting brand at the moment. Once the halo brand of the Chrysler Corporation, the years have not been so kind. From 1925 the brand stood alone until 1998 when it "merged" with Daimler to become DaimlerChrysler, a venture that still bears fruit to this day. In 2007 the Chrysler family of vehicles spun off into Chrysler LLC before becoming Chrysler Group LLC. The brand then joined forces with Fiat to form Fiat Chrysler Automobiles or FCA, an acronym that still finds its way onto modern vehicles even though FCA merged to become Stellantis in 2021.

History lesson aside, the brand only has two vehicles as of the 2023 model year, with a planned obsolescence of their 300 sedan at the end of the model year. The 300 is one of the last vestiges of the DaimlerChrysler venture that ended in 2007. The other is the Pacifica minivan, the only such vehicle in the Stellantis family of brands since Dodge decided to kill off the Caravan in an effort to lean into their performance persona.

With Chrysler inventing the minivan segment back in the mid-1980s, the Pacifica is a very important vehicle to the brand, though it has seen a storied history as well, borrowing its name from a doomed crossover from decades ago to replace the aging Town and Country nameplate.

All that to say, this Airflow concept, the first battery electric vehicle or BEV concept from the Chrysler brand is very important to the future of the historic American nameplate. Signaling both a new direction for propulsion with their fully-electric drive system, and a new design direction that even updates the brand's logo, this Airflow is the new face of the brand.

We can't help but notice similarities to the doomed 200 sedan's clean lines that are modernized for 2023. The overall look of this Graphite concept is nice, but rather nondescript, allowing the airflow around the vehicle to determine its shape. Chrysler makes their concept more interesting by giving it a metallic black paint with Cypress bronze accents. Inside is a concept-like four captain chairs arranged with massive amounts of room for all onboard. The joys of EV platforms is the way the wheels can be pushed far out to give more room to the cabin and its occupants.

There is plenty of tech in this concept to keep any occupant busy for the brand's claimed 350+ miles of electric range. While we acknowledge that this is a concept in the early stages of design and engineering, after Ram Trucks changed direction from their REV concept to the production version, we are curious how much of this EV will see a showroom floor.