DETROIT—Private equity firm likely will be the winning bidder to buy from , and an announcement could come as early as Monday, a company official said Sunday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because negotiations still have not been finalized, said no announcement would be made Sunday.

The potential sale comes after nearly two months of study and negotiations by several companies interested in buying DaimlerChrysler’s troubled U.S. operations.

The German-American company announced Feb. 14 that all options are open for Chrysler, which lost $1.5 billion last year and is undergoing a restructuring plan that will eventually shed 13,000 jobs.

Cerberus spokesman Peter Duda in New York declined to comment.

Thomas Froehlich, a spokesman for DaimlerChrysler in Stuttgart, Germany, said there was no official comment on whether any deal had been struck, much less the timing of any announcement.

Spokesmen at Chrysler headquarters in Auburn Hills and German Union officials, who have a strong say on the DaimlerChrysler board, also would not comment on the developments.

Messages seeking comment were left Sunday for United Auto Workers spokesman Roger Kerson.

Analysts have said it’s likely DaimlerChrysler would retain a minority stake in Chrysler if it is sold because the two companies are still intertwined.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Cerberus would keep Chrysler Chief Executive Tom LaSorda in place, while former Chrysler Chief Operating Officer Wolfgang Bernhard could get a board seat. Cerberus has retained Bernhard as an adviser.

The Journal, which cited unnamed people familiar with the matter, also reported that key to the deal is who picks up Chrysler’s staggering health care liabilities for hourly retirees. The liability is estimated at $19 billion.

Last year, General Motors Corp. sold a majority stake in its General Motors Acceptance Corp. financing arm to a consortium of investors led by Cerberus for about $14 billion. Analysts have said buying a big stake in Chrysler could be attractive to Cerberus because it could combine GMAC operations with Chrysler Financial.

In December, Cerberus was part of a consortium of investors that said it would invest $3.4 billion in the struggling auto parts giant Delphi Corp. in exchange for new shares of Delphi stock as it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The New York-based firm was to have put up half the total.

But the UAW was reluctant to grant concessions sought by Cerberus, and Delphi said last month that Cerberus was pulling out of the group, although as recently as last week that had not happened.

On its Web site, Cerberus said the companies in which it has a controlling or significant minority stakes generate over $60 billion in annual revenues. Its worldwide investments include businesses involved in aerospace and military, autos, building products, retailing, financial services, health care, distribution, paper and packaging, real estate, telecommunications, transportation and travel.

The other companies reportedly interested in Chrysler at one time include Canadian auto parts supplier Magna International Inc., a consortium of investors led by Blackstone Group, and GM. Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, who tried to take control of Chrysler in the 1990s, also has said he would make a bid.

Daimler-Benz AG paid $36 billion for Chrysler in 1998.

Google Inc. says it is prepared to bid billions of dollars in an auction of federal wireless frequencies to create a national broadband network that could compete directly with the wired networks of companies like AT&T and Comcast.

A victory would open the door for Google to operate the network itself, vastly increasing its business prospects by selling Internet, telephone and television services. Or it could have other companies do the job, a more likely scenario.

But the Mountain View Internet giant also said it would bid on the band of wireless spectrum that’s on the block only if federal regulators met certain conditions. It’s unclear whether the government will meet Google’s demands.

Google hopes its celebrity and deep pockets will sway federal regulators to implement rules requiring the auction’s winner to lease portions of the wireless “spectrum” to third parties.

That’s because Google is trying to spur competition in Internet access, a business dominated by big telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Comcast. If smaller companies could lease some of the airwaves, they would be able to offer services rivaling those of the telephone and cable giants, ultimately presenting consumers with greater choice, Google said.

“In short, when Americans can use the software and handsets of their choice, over open and competitive networks, they win,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, wrote in a letter Friday to Kevin Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

The fight over the airwave auction is another example of Google trying to exercise its influence in Washington. Increasingly, the company is in conflict with various legislators and regulators and is quickly beefing up its presence in the nation’s capital to compete against a host of powerful business and privacy groups.

Over the past few months, Google has aggressively lobbied to shape the auction’s rules, laying down four principles that it says are critical. The commission adopted two of the rules, although the wholesale provision appears to be the most important to the company.

Google’s involvement in the airwave auction is partly spurred by self-interest, particularly the fear that telecommunications companies might depart from the tradition of delivering Internet traffic to all comers at the same speed for the same price. Telecommunications companies have left the door open to creating a second, faster tier of service so they could charge companies like Google more for using their Internet lines.

Although arcane, the issue is a big bone of contention between the Web giants and Internet service providers. A major fight in Congress — dubbed “network neutrality” — ended last year with the telecommunications companies prevailing.

A wholesale provision in the auction rules would provide a work-around for Google. Even if it doesn’t win the auction, it could lease some of the airwave space to get its services to consumers or benefit from like-minded wholesalers leasing the airwaves.

But despite heavy lobbying over several months, Google has so far failed to get the language it wants. A draft version of auction rules by the FCC doesn’t include any wholesale provisions.

The absence is supported by several major telecommunications companies, including AT&T, which have complained that sharing the airwaves with wholesalers reduces their value.

Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president, external and legislative affairs, praised the FCC’s chairman this week for striking “an interesting and creative balance between the competing interests.” He added in response to Google’s letter Friday that the plan gives Google a chance to “put up or shut up.”

“They can bid and enter the wireless market with any business model they prefer, then let consumers decide which model they like best,” Cicconi said. He added that the letter “is an attempt to pressure the U.S. government to turn the auction process on its head by ensuring only a few, if any, bidders will compete with Google.”

If the wholesale provision is adopted, Google said it’s willing to pledge at least $4.6 billion for the auction, the reserve bidding price required by regulators to participate. The date of the sale has yet to be set, although it must take place before Jan. 28, 2008.

Estimates are that the auction, which is described as one of the most important ever, will raise about $20 billion for the U.S. Treasury.

E-mail Verne Kopytoff at vkopytoff@sfchronicle.com.

Want to be the first on your block with a $50,000 Toyota Prius?

Head to Hybrids Plus in Boulder, Colo., and leave your Prius with their technicians. Go skiing or something, come back in three or four days with a check for $24,000 and you will have one of the nation’s very few plug-in hybrids that should easily get 100 miles per gallon.

A plug-in is an ordinary hybrid with an electric motor and gasoline engine that has been modified — usually by upgrading its battery pack or adding more batteries — so it can go a lot farther on electric power than it normally does. On Thursday, a study funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a power-industry group lined up behind advocates in dubbing plug-ins the car of the future, albeit the distant future.

That study said greenhouse gas emissions and domestic oil consumption would drop sharply if plug-in hybrid technology became widespread by 2050. Mass production of the vehicles, however, is years away.

Still, Bay Area Prius lovers can have their very own supergreen car right now — for a price.

A normal Prius retails at a Toyota showroom for about $23,000, but frequently sells for more because the cars are in such demand.

Hybrids Plus is one of the few outfits in the country that, for another $24,000 or so, will remove the nickel metal hydride battery that comes with the Prius and replace it with a more powerful lithium ion battery.

“We’re converting cars for private customers,” said Hybrids Plus CEO Carl Lawrence. “We have a guy coming in Thursday. He’s buying the extension pack that doubles the range. That’s an additional $8,000″ — making it a $60,000 Prius.

“We’ve been selling to whoever walks in the door and wants one,” Lawrence said. Mostly, he noted, they’re rich.

Most of the 50-odd plug-in hybrids that have been manufactured in the United States and Canada have been put into use as demonstrators for government fleets and for utilities that want to show how efficient a mostly electric-powered car can be.

Living with a plug-in hybrid, drivers say, can have its quirks.

“The first thing you notice is that it’s quiet,” said Sven Thesen, a supervisor in the Clean Transportation Program at Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Thesen frequently uses a plug-in hybrid Prius that is in the PG&E fleet.

“If you’re under 34 mph and not gassing it — that’s a silly term for an electric vehicle — it’s silent,” Thesen said. “It’s more quiet than your normal Prius.”

At home, all one needs to recharge the car is an extension cord and an outlet in the garage. On the road, however, it’s a different story.

“There’s a plug mounted in the bumper,” Thesen said. “When I’m on the road and I take the car to a hotel, I drive around the parking lot looking for a Coke machine. When I find one, I park close to it, so I can plug in where the Coke machine is. … Then it takes six to eight hours to charge.”

PG&E is using a plug-in hybrid made by Energy CS in Southern California. The car, which has been dubbed “Sparky,” is driven around the Bay Area and taken to public demonstrations mainly as an education tool, Thesen said.

Plug-in hybrids are an infant industry — even the word industry implies more organization than is commonly found in the plug-in world. There are all kinds of pitfalls and problems that crop up in the daily research and development of plug-ins.

“We’re definitely studying the plug-in hybrid as an addition to our current hybrid system,” said Bill Kwong, a Toyota spokesman. Toyota has made a major commitment to hybrid technology, both for its Toyota cars and its upscale line of Lexus vehicles.

“Right now, hybrid is the best combination of energy and convenience,” Kwong said. “But there are still challenges with battery technology.”

Over the past few years, there have been reports of lithium ion batteries in laptop computers heating up and, in some cases, catching fire. Kwong said that in addition to making sure any vehicle sold by Toyota is safe — the automaker is not interested in selling cars that could easily catch fire — the company wants to ensure that the batteries have a long life. Hence, long research.

And would-be modifiers of Priuses, beware: Kwong said modifying a Prius with new batteries renders the car’s power train warranty “null and void.”

At the California Air Resources Board, they’re just as cautious about plug-ins as they are at Toyota.

“We think there’s a definite role in the future for plug-in hybrids, but there are still some hurdles to overcome in developing a battery that will last the life of the vehicle,” said board spokeswoman Karen Caesar. “Today they are still considered experimental. We are not encouraging people to disassemble their Priuses to turn them into plug-ins.”

Maybe so, but they do draw the curious.

“If I stop the vehicle, I have people pulling up beside me,” Thesen said. “They see the 100 mpg sign on the side of the car and they say, ‘What did you do to get 100 mpg?’ It’s everyone from Prius owners to techie drivers. People like it because they don’t have to go to the gas station as often.

“Plugging in in the evening and unplugging in the morning is easy,” Thesen said, “compared with the hassle of going to a gas station.”
Online resources

More information on plug-in hybrids is available at the Web site of CalCars, a nonprofit group in the Bay Area that promotes the vehicles:

«www.calcars.org»

E-mail Michael Taylor at mtaylor@sfchronicle.com.