Dodge keeps true to its roots with the first electric Charger muscle car

PHOENIX—Dodge gave its development team a relatively simple brief for the new Charger: It had to look, drive, and sound like a traditional Dodge muscle car. "If we don't make people uncomfortable, where are we going," asked Matt McAleer, Dodge and SRT's CEO. And you can see what he means: customers will have a choice of battery-electric or, from next year, an inline-six gasoline engine. For now, there is no throbbing V8 version, and those options will surely make some Dodge muscle car purists a little uncomfortable.

But the new car certainly looks the part. According to Scott Krueger, vice president for exterior design at Dodge, the stylists' aimed for "heritage, not retro," and they achieved that with a sedan shape that certainly evokes the classic 1968 Charger without directly copying any of its lines. It's a car that looks great in the metal, and features like the LED strip of daylight running lights and the so-called "R-wing" at the front ensure that the design feels thoroughly modern and not a pastiche.

It's not exactly compact, though—at 206.9 inches (5,248 mm) long, 78.1 inches (2,028 mm) wide, and 58.9 inches (1,497 mm) tall, the Charger was built with American roads (and parking spaces) in mind, and is in fact 2 inches (50 mm) wider than the outgoing Charger Hellcat widebody.

The payoff is a huge amount of interior space and, thanks to a 121-inch (3,074 mm) wheelbase, room for two full-size adults in the back seat. This shouldn't be a surprise: Next year, Dodge introduces a four-door version of the Charger, which keeps the same dimensions as the two-door you see here.

The interior looks as good as the outside. The doors and dash are backlit via LEDs (that allow you to pick your own preferred hue from a choice of 64), which amplifies the sense of the interior space. And yet, from the driver's seat, you feel happily cosseted in place. As already mentioned, four adults really can fit in comfort inside the Charger, and its practicality is further enhanced by the hatchback that gives you access to the cargo area.

The infotainment uses the Android Automotive-based uConnect 5, which runs here on a 12.3-inch screen. Underneath the infotainment is a strip of haptic controls for the climate settings—better than having to use the touchscreen, but not as good as real buttons, we reckon.

There was also some lag when using the system, and on our drive, the map display began to smear and break up as cellular reception dried up. First drives such as these usually involve preproduction cars, as was the case here, and it's reasonable to expect these issues to be remedied by the time Chargers reach their owners.

R/T or Scat Pack

The new Charger now features an inherently stiffer platform than the V8 charger it replaces—Dodge says the powertrain-agonistic body is 23 percent stiffer than the old car, a number that rises to 50 percent for the battery-electric Charger Daytona once the 93.9 kWh (100.5 kWh gross) battery pack has been mated.

There's a choice of two different all-wheel-drive Charger Daytonas for now. The $59,995 R/T makes 456 hp (340 kW) and 404 lb-ft (548 Nm) of torque, although you can boost output to 496 hp (370 kW) for short bursts, using the Power Shot button on the steering wheel. Dodge says this version should have a range of 308 miles (496 km) on a single charge, thanks in part, I suspect, to 18-inch wheels. At the drag strip, the R/T should hit 60 mph (98 km/h) in 4.7 seconds and run the 1/4 mile in 12.6 seconds.

The other Charger Daytona at launch will be the $73,130 Scat Pack, a name that makes sense to Dodge aficionados but which tends to induce mirth among some others. The Scat Pack uses the same motors as the R/T, but here the powertrain is rated for offering a much headier 630 hp (470 kW)—which becomes 670 hp (500 kW) when you push the power shot button—and 627 lb-ft (850 Nm).

The Scat Pack comes with a host of drive modes designed for use at the racetrack and drag strip, including a race mode, donut/drift mode, and launch control. In a straight line, it can sprint to 60 mph in 3.3 seconds and complete the 1/4 mile in 11.5 seconds. But range takes a hefty hit versus the R/T, with an EPA estimate of just 240 miles.

Regardless of which one you pick, charge times are the same. A DC fast charge can take as little as 32.5 minutes to go from 5–80 percent on a 350 kW charger, or 24 minutes if you charge from 20-80 percent. (A less-powerful 175 kW charger would take more than 52 minutes to go from 5–80, or 42 minutes to go from 20–80 percent state of charge.) AC charging maxes out at 11 kW, but Dodge only gave us charge times to 80 percent, not 0–100 for this stat.

The Scat Pack also upgrades the Charger's dampers to dual valve adaptive ones, as well as seriously beefing up the brakes.

Great on the road, not quite so hot on track

Being behind the wheel of the R/T as we navigated across Phoenix revealed the new Charger to be rather good at the task. Left in Auto mode, it's near-silent in operation, and the monotone dampers do a good job of soaking up bumps and expansion gaps on the highway, controlling the 5,698-lb (2,585 kg) curb weight well.

The preproduction bugs continued, however—a powertrain warning light and a range computer that claimed we were averaging a simply unbelievable 8.5 miles/kWh (7.3 kWh/100 km) to name but two. A real-world range estimate will have to wait for a full review next year.

Following our road drive, we got some time with the Charger on the skid pad, drag strip, and road course at the Radford racing school in Phoenix, home to Dodge's official driving school as well. Drift/Donut mode turns off the front motor entirely, as well as stability control, and then has settings to vary the traction control to let you drift or just spin around on the spot.

Doing a 720 wasn't really my intention but the result on my first couple of goes, but third time was the charm for a semi-successful Scandinavian flick. I'm far from a skilled drifter, but the Charger was relatively easy to keep sideways and sliding thanks to a progressive throttle pedal.

The race track proved equally illuminating but did not portray this EV in such a positive light. At 5,767 lbs (2,615 kg), the Scat Pack is even heavier than its less-powerful sibling, and the instructors were conservative when placing the brake markers in deference to that fact. At 6/10ths the Charger felt untroubled on track, but as the pace increased it became increasingly uncomfortable with the task at hand. A quick right-left-right sequence with a modicum of camber revealed a rather uncomposed chassis in particular, and around the faster bends, understeer was what you found at the edge of the envelope.

I'm not sure that really matters, though. After all, how many Charger Daytona owners are going to take their EVs for a day lapping the track?

A visit to the drag strip is more likely, although I hope those owners have better luck with the launch control feature than I did, which disengaged on both my runs. (Once may have been because I lifted my right foot from the accelerator, but I know for sure the second time it remained fully flat throughout.)

Without the onboard electronics doing their best to optimize wheel slip versus traction, it was a lively experience that required me to actively steer the Charger for the first third of the drag strip. In terms of driver engagement it was a winner, although my elapsed time started with a 12 on both runs.

Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust

While the Charger Daytona is a quiet beast in Auto mode, once you switch to any of the spicier drivetrain settings things get a lot noisier. That's thanks to something called a Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust, which uses "dual bespoke, high-efficiency extreme bandwidth transducers coupled with dual Fratzonic Chamber-loaded passive radiators" powered by a 600 W amplifier.

You can hear some of what that sounds like in the embedded video of a Charger on the drag strip above. It's louder in Donut/Drift, Drag, and Track than it is in Sport and has the same decibel level as the V8 Hellcat Chargers, Dodge told us.

As synthetic car sounds go, the Charger's is not bad. It sounds much closer to an actual internal combustion engine than the F-Zero sounds of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N in N mode, but unlike that EV you can't "rev" the Charger in neutral for curious bystanders—of which the Dodge garnered many—nor does it pop or crackle when you lift at part-throttle. At least for the moment; Dodge could always program that behavior in via a software update, should it choose.

The R/T is where it’s at

Yet again, after driving different versions of the same EV, I am left with the conclusion that the less-powerful one is the pick of the bunch. For day-to-day driving, its 404 hp is more than sufficient, and the significantly higher range means that if you do want to go for a very long drive you'll spend more time between charges in your Charger.

As an EV that's designed to make your pulse race, it's a decent effort by Dodge. Not quite up there with the very special Ioniq 5 N, but one that probably makes more sense to a larger number of car buyers in North America.