Chrysler sells the only hybrid minivan in the US — and it’s seriously impressive (FCAU)

The Pacifica — granddaddy of minivans, now all-new.Matthew DeBord/BI

PROS: Suave styling; scads of space for people, pets, and stuff; robust drivetrain, fuel economy, sneaky good Uconnect infotainment system.

CONS: Apart from being a minivan, none really. Lacks an onboard vacuum cleaner in hybrid trim and doesn’t have all-wheel-drive.

In minivan land, the question of which versatile family hauler often distills to a simple choice: Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna?

Both those minivans are fine and dandy, though different. There is, however, a third choice: go Chrysler.

When Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was just Chrysler, it created the minivan under its Dodge brand, back in the 1980s. The original minivan was a wild success, and although the segment is frequently stigmatized, and although minivans have given ground to SUVs of late, the Big Three minivans still sell.

In fact, Chrysler’s new minivan, the Pacifica (replacing the Town & Country), is now outselling both the Odyssey — all-new for 2018 — and the Sienna, which is due for a redesign pretty soon.

We’ve checked out the Odyssey and we’ve sampled the Sienna. To complete our minivan roundup, we tackled the Pacifica last. We can’t really make a fair comparison because our tester was a $47,885 Pacifica Hybrid Platinum. Yep, that’s right: a plug-in hybrid minivan, the only one currently for sale.

A bit of an odd wrinkle, by the way. Our Odyssey was built in Alabama, and our Sienna was made in Indiana. The Pacifica hails from Ontario, Canada (but just so you know, the town is Windsor, just across the Detroit River from Motown).

We put the Pacifica through its paces in suburban New Jersey. Here’s how it went.