It’s a brand that brought us the Challenger and Charger SRT Hellcat. Now, it’s introducing its first electric muscle car.
Dodge teased the upcoming, as-yet unnamed vehicle as part of parent company Stellantis’ EV day, and it’s set for launch in 2024.
The teaser video shows the electric muscle car doing a four-wheel burnout, though no performance details were revealed.
The styling looks to be heavily inspired by the second-generation Charger, which was in production from 1968 to 1970, with crisp detailing.
That includes a full-width panel up front, which in the Charger contained the grille and the ultimate in 1960s cool: hidden headlights.
In the new car, this full-width panel is outlined with LED lighting, with the logo also illuminated.
There look to be bulging wheel arch flares plus a power dome bonnet.
The rear is harder to make out, but we can see a logo illuminated in red.
If the retro styling cues weren’t immediately visible in the teaser video, the retro logo certainly will be.
While Dodge appears to be keeping its written logo – punctuated by two red, slanted stripes – its electric muscle car will dust off a logo from the brand’s past.
The Fratzog, as it’s known, was Dodge’s logo during the 1960s and 1970s, the era during which the first Challenger and Charger appeared.
Dodge says it has one of the youngest and most diverse demographics of any car brand in the US, with the highest percentage of millennials.
It also says it sees electric vehicles not as a revolution, but as a natural evolution.
“Dodge will not sell electric cars. It will sell American muscle,” said Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis.
“So if a charger can make a Charger quicker, we’re in.
“We know electric motors can give us more, so if we know a technology that can give our customers an advantage, we have an obligation to embrace it. Whatever it takes to keep them in the lead.”
Though the Viper is gone, Dodge has bolstered its performance car ranks in recent years.
It returned to the rear-wheel drive sedan market in 2006 with the Charger, and resurrected the Challenger in 2008 with styling that pays homage to its original iteration.
Since then, Dodge has added hotter SRT-8, Hellcat and Redeye versions of both, as well as an extreme SRT Demon variant for the Challenger.
The Caravan minivan and Journey crossover have finally been retired, leaving the Charger, Challenger and the Durango crossover, related to the outgoing Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Like its passenger car siblings, the Durango is also available in SRT and Hellcat guises, the latter with the Hellcat cars’ 6.2-litre supercharged V8 engine.
The battery-powered muscle car is part of a much broader push into the world of electric cars by Stellantis, an amalgamation of FCA and Peugeot Citroen.
It plans to invest more than €30 billion in electrification by 2025, and wants more than 70 per cent of its European sales to be low-emissions by 2030.
In the USA, that 2030 sales target is a more conservative 40 per cent.
