2024 Dodge EV muscle car to ‘tear up the streets, not the planet’
Dodge will take on Tesla with a tarmac-tearing EV set to redefine American automotive muscle.
The classically-American brand that has built its reputation on noise, burnouts and big performance plans to shed its high-powered V8s and reinvent the muscle car with electric motors in 2024.
Just don’t go calling it an EV!
During the EV Day from parent company Stellantis – which announced a €30 billion investment in electric vehicles by 2030 touching all 14 of its brands – Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis confirmed Dodge would be “embracing the brand’s history while looking to the future”.
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“In 2024 Dodge will launch the world’s first full battery electric muscle car,” he said after raising the corner of a car cover to tease the new car that was presumably hidden underneath.
Dodge teased the design of the new 2024 Dodge muscle car with shadowy images of it during a video presentation.
It included vision of the car doing a four-wheeled burnout, confirming the Dodge EV muscle car would drive all four wheels.
it also looks set to revive the classis “fratzog” logo from the 1960s and ’70s (see it on the image at the top of the article).
The new Dodge will ride on the new STLA Large architecture, the letters denoting Stellantis, the newly formed merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot Citroen.
It will be one of eight new models from within the Stellantis family to utilise the new STLA Large architecture between 2024 and 2026.
STLA Large is designed to take battery capacities from 101kWh to 118kWh and have an EV range of up to 800km – although there’s a good chance a Dodge muscle car will fall shy of that given the focus on going fast.
Speaking of which, the target acceleration time is said to be around 2.0 seconds for the 0-100km/h dash, putting it on a similar level to the Tesla Model S Plaid.
And Kuniskis made a frank admission during the presentation: Dodge has achieved pretty much all it can from V8 engines.
“Our engineers are reaching a practical limit of what we can squeeze from internal combustion innovation,” said Kuniskis.
It doesn’t help that EV pioneer Tesla recently unveiled its Model S Plaid that can easily smoke any of Dodge’s loud and proud V8s.
“Electric motors can give us more,” said Kuniskis in a video presentation. “And if we know of a technology that can give customers an advantage, we have an obligation to embrace it.
“We’ve pushed this pedal to the floor.”
And expect more power in the Dodge muscle car EV shift.
Kuniskis even showed a graph of horsepower versus sales, showing “with every gain in horsepower” sales increased.
Kuniskis said the imminent shift to electrification was “a natural evolution of the modern muscle car”.
It’s fair to say that’s a long way from what anyone at Dodge would have been thinking years ago.
It’s also a reasonable assumption Dodge couldn’t see any other way but to embrace the electric wave.
Kuniskis says Dodge will “amplify the elements of not just Dodge but the muscle car itself”.
“We expect to thrive and define the future of American muscle … to tear up the streets, not the planet.”
However, Kuniskis is playing games with the EV moniker, suggesting the brand is not making electric vehicles.
“We won’t sell electric vehicles, we will sell more motors,” he said.
“Our customers purchase an experience, not a technology. Dodge will not sell electric cars. Dodge will sell American muscle.
Or eMuscle, as Dodge refers to it.
Either way, there will soon be a very fast, very brash Dodge powered purely by electricity.
As for whther the new Dodge EV will make it to Australia, no word yet. A Stellantis Australia spokesperson told us it was currently working on its EV rollout strategy.
