Chrysler Group LLC, the U.S. automaker operated by Fiat SpA, will begin selling hybrid versions of its 300 sedan next year as well as of its next- generation minivan later, the companies’ top executive said.

Chrysler Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne spoke today during an event at the company’s plant in Windsor, Ontario, celebrating the production of the 2011 Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country minivans, Bloomberg reported. He told the workers that the future of the plant was “guaranteed” and that the next-generation minivan would come in 2013 or 2014.

The next minivan design may have mechanical underpinnings that could be used for a full-size car, Marchionne said. The plant could also produce Fiat models, he said, as he stressed the flexibility of the engineering in the future vehicles.

“You’re going to see a new architecture on the line, a completely different architecture, completely re-thought,” he told reporters after the event. “We’ve learned a lot in making this minivan over the last 20 plus years. We need to upgrade this and make it a much more versatile platform, one that will allow us to make more than just minivans.”

Being able to build the next-generation minivan and other vehicles on the same platform is part of Marchionne’s plans to reduce the complexity of the company’s plans.

“I’d like to get 80 percent of the volume on four or five architectures,” he said.

Marchionne’s comments during the Detroit auto show last week, in which he indicated the company was considering replacing one of its duplicate minivan brands with a different kind of vehicle such as a mini-minivan, revealed that the automaker is reviewing its people-mover strategy.

“We’re looking at a hybrid as being an integral solution going forward,” he said.

The full-sized Chrysler 300 sedan will come with a hybrid system in 2012, he said.