2024 Dodge Charger Daytona First Drive: Can an EV be a Muscle Car?

MotorTrend

The people who brought you the Hemi

Transcript

00:00Have you ever heard an EV that sounds like this?

00:03Have you ever seen an EV do this?

00:11Have you ever smelled an EV do this?

00:14What the hell? It won't do a burnout?

00:17That's right. The 2024 Dodge Charger Daytona,

00:21the electric successor to the gas-chugging, tire-eviscerating Challenger,

00:25can't do a burnout.

00:27Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:29Before you throw your phone into a pond, just stick with me to the end.

00:33Despite the fact a Daytona can't smoke its rear meat,

00:36Dodge wants you to think of this car as a muscle car first,

00:40and an EV, well, somewhere after.

00:46It's got a hulking presence, it's obnoxiously loud,

00:49outrageously powerful, and absurdly quick.

00:53Of course, the reason this car can't do a burnout

00:56isn't for a lack of power or torque.

00:58It makes 670 horsepower and 628 pound-feet of torque,

01:02but all that output is split equally front and rear.

01:08And, of course, this is a single-speed EV,

01:12which means that one gear ratio has to take you all the way from idle,

01:15or one mile per hour, up to top speed.

01:18And so that single gear ratio is much taller than first gear in a gas vehicle.

01:23Add that up with some pretty grippy tires,

01:25you just can't break the tires free.

01:27It's a bummer that Dodge didn't think to put in some kind of software algorithm

01:32to help you break it free.

01:34But, instead, they've done the opposite.

01:36This vehicle does not like pedal overlap,

01:39where you're applying both the brake and the accelerator.

01:42To me, it's the biggest miss with this car.

01:44You're telling me to think of it as a muscle car,

01:46and it can't do burnouts.

01:49That said, if you're not trying to smoke the tires,

01:52and you just care about going fast,

01:54this thing's got the juice.

01:56I've got the powertrain in the most relaxed street mode,

01:59but if I hit power shot and flatten the accelerator,

02:02holy hell, this thing goes.

02:06Dodge claims a quarter-mile time of 11.5 seconds

02:09for the $75,185 Scat Pack,

02:13and I actually ran in 11.47 seconds

02:16at 119.5 miles per hour on a drag strip.

02:20If it can reproduce those times in our testing on a street surface,

02:24the Daytona will easily walk every hellcat Motor Trend has ever tested.

02:29The $61,590 RT model uses the exact same motors,

02:34but it's software-limited to 496 horsepower

02:37and 404 pound-feet of torque,

02:40which takes a big bite out of the 0-to-60 time

02:43at a claimed 4.7 seconds.

02:45There will, of course, eventually be an SRT model

02:48that will almost certainly launch to 60 in less than 3 seconds.

02:52Of course, everybody can and does make EVs

02:55that are blindingly quick in a straight line.

02:58What really caught me by surprise is how good the Daytona's chassis is.

03:03This Charger Daytona feels much more composed,

03:06like a much better-handling vehicle than the Challenger it replaces,

03:10and that's for two main reasons.

03:12The first is that this vehicle was designed from the outset,

03:15the body structure of the chassis,

03:17for the most powerful versions that Dodge will make,

03:20and that's not true.

03:21If you look at the bones of that old Challenger platform,

03:25they set out, and they only worked on those mainstream versions initially,

03:29and when it came time to make the SRT versions,

03:32they sat down and said,

03:33oh, man, how are we going to do this?

03:35How are we going to strengthen it, stiffen it,

03:37to handle this extra power and torque?

03:39They did that from the beginning,

03:41and with the battery installed,

03:43this vehicle is 50% stiffer than the Challenger it replaces.

03:47The second factor is the fact that the weight distribution

03:51and torque distribution is split evenly,

03:55whereas the old Challenger, you had all this weight up front,

03:58sending all the torque to the rear,

04:00and so it understeered, underbraking,

04:02when you're trying to trail brake it in the corners,

04:05and it liked to oversteer when you're applying power,

04:07exiting those corners.

04:09That can be fun.

04:10That can be a ton of fun.

04:12This vehicle feels far more ruthless and effective in cornering.

04:17I don't know if all that's going to hold up on the track,

04:20but we're going to find out.

04:22Putting the old Challenger on a track was always a recipe for disappointment.

04:26Too heavy, too soft, too uncoordinated,

04:29and this electric Charger Daytona is predictably

04:32even more massive than the car it replaces.

04:35It weighs 5,900 pounds,

04:38more than 1,000 pounds heavier than a Tesla Model S Plaid.

04:42Suffice it to say, I pulled onto the road course

04:44at Radford Racing School with low expectations.

04:47This car is massively heavy.

04:505,900 pounds.

04:52Of course, it's got plenty of power.

04:56To compensate, 670 horsepower in the scat pack

04:59when I push that PowerShot button.

05:03And what I'll say about the weight is

05:06the steering is to be extremely immediate.

05:12There's no hesitation.

05:14You don't have to wait for the suspension or the bushings to load up.

05:18This thing goes.

05:20It definitely feels more athletic than the Challenger that it replaces.

05:25That's maybe not saying a whole lot.

05:28Of course, the scat pack has the track package,

05:30which is bigger brakes, adaptive dampers.

05:33This one has staggered summer tires on it.

05:36Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3s.

05:40And I would say it's got the right amount of grip.

05:43It's not a track hero.

05:45It doesn't have the amazing track rubber,

05:48but enough grip to have a ton of fun with this car.

05:54The balance on this is actually fantastic.

05:57I think all those stories we wrote over the years

06:00about Challengers and Chargers being kind of reluctant to turn in

06:05and not a ton of fun on a road course.

06:09Maybe time to stop writing those stories.

06:12Of course, a racetrack isn't a muscle car's natural habitat,

06:15which is probably why Dodge included a drift in donut mode,

06:19which sends stability control on a lunch break

06:21and delivers more torque to the rear wheels.

06:24Like pretty much every all-wheel drive car,

06:26it takes some finesse to sustain a drift in the Daytona.

06:29And weirdly, sometimes the inside front tire

06:32starts furiously spinning in the middle of the bend.

06:35But getting the rear end to break loose isn't all that hard,

06:38and it makes for a hilarious and fun consolation prize

06:42for that whole not doing a burnout thing.

06:45At this point, we have to talk about the most controversial aspect

06:48of the Dodge Charger Daytona, the way it sounds.

06:52The temptation to pull a Milli Vanilli using the Hellcats vocals

06:55must have been strong, but the NVH team resisted

06:58and instead took a field trip to the old Viper assembly plant,

07:01where the comfy crown jewels are now kept.

07:04There, they sampled the exhaust note of every vehicle in the historical collection.

07:08That's why you'll hear the wind-up of a Chrysler turbine car

07:11layered into the ignition sequence.

07:14And the car idles, quote-unquote,

07:16with the same 38 hertz primary frequency of the original Hemi.

07:21Those sounds originate from speakers powered by a dedicated 600-watt amp

07:26that are mounted to a 1.5-cubic-foot enclosure

07:29mounted behind the rear fascia

07:31to give it the resonance and volume we've been conditioned to expect

07:35from a Dodge muscle car.

07:37What's most strange about the Daytona

07:39is that it seems to have at least three different vocal personalities.

07:43The futuristic startup and shutdown sequences

07:45remind me of a Dolby sound test.

07:48The engine rev comes across as a lo-fi sound effect

07:51from an 80s arcade game,

07:53and the deep thrum when driving it is closest to a combustion engine.

07:58Maybe the best thing about it is that, if you hate it,

08:01you can completely shut it off.

08:04So we've established that the Charger Daytona is unique among EVs,

08:08but how is it as an electric vehicle?

08:10What's the range and the charging like?

08:13Well, the Scat Pack version gets 241 miles on the EPA cycle.

08:18Not bad.

08:19But if you're willing to sacrifice some speed and performance

08:22and take some lower-grip tires,

08:25you can get up to 300 heat miles in the RT.

08:28The Daytona is an awesome highway cruiser

08:31with a buttery smooth ride and tomb-like silence in the cabin.

08:35Tesla could learn a thing or two from Dodge about sealing frameless windows.

08:39On road trips, though, the RT's long legs will be cramped by its mediocre charging.

08:44Dodge claims, very specifically,

08:47that both models peak at 183 kilowatts of charging power

08:51and that the 100.5 kilowatt-hour battery

08:54can be charged from 5 to 80 percent in 32 and a half minutes.

08:59So much of the Charger Daytona's appeal is the way it looks,

09:03because it looks like no other EV.

09:06This vehicle is inspired by the 1968 Charger,

09:10with the linear horizontal elements and the very vertical front fascia,

09:14and the separation between the front of the car,

09:17the side of the car, and the rear of the car.

09:20It's a huge vehicle.

09:22If it were any wider, they'd have to put those amber off-road markers on it

09:26that you see on Raptors and ZR2s.

09:29The wheelbase has stretched five inches relative to the old Challenger,

09:33which makes for a huge back seat.

09:35And to reign in all that mass,

09:37this has the largest tire and brake packages of any Dodge muscle car.

09:43From the inside, the Daytona is the Chevy Suburban of two-door cars,

09:48feeling positively cavernous.

09:50A pair of digital screens take control of most functions,

09:53along with a strip of capacitive climate controls

09:56that provide haptic feedback with a loud, cheap click.

10:00An optional fixed glass roof and ambient lighting

10:03splash light across the cabin.

10:05And the rear seats are probably the most accommodating

10:08we've ever experienced in a two-door,

10:10at least any built in the past 40 years.

10:13There's room for a six-foot-three passenger in back,

10:16with legroom to spare.

10:18The hatchback opens to reveal a massive 22.8 cubic feet of cargo space,

10:23while the 1.5 cubic foot front can swallow a backpack or a small duffel bag.

10:29So where is it all net out?

10:31The Charger Daytona is a powerful yet comfortable roadrunner

10:34that's equally at home rocketing down a laser-straight desert highway

10:38or chasing apexes up a canyon road.

10:41But Dodge's efforts to bring its unique brand of muscle car energy

10:44to the EV world is a mixed success.

10:47Strip away the sound and the donut mode,

10:49and the Daytona doesn't drive all that different than a Tesla or a BMW.

10:53I'm not sure Dodge will take that as a compliment, but it should.

10:57And yet, even without hearing or driving this car,

11:00we could have held the Charger Daytona off

11:03as proof that Dodge remains completely unhinged.

11:07In 2013, its parent company Stellantis

11:10paid a record-high $236 million fine

11:14for failing to meet America's corporate average fuel economy regs.

11:18The obvious fix for getting in the government's good graces

11:21would be to build an EV, and hybrids, and four-cylinders, and smaller vehicles

11:26for the crossover-loving masses.

11:28And yet, Dodge's answer is a tail-wagging, eardrum-thumping,

11:32three-ton, two-door car that starts at $61,590.

11:38Uncle Sam might have twisted Dodge's arm into building an EV,

11:42but it wasn't a government stooge that dreamed up an electric tribute

11:46to America's thirstiest performance cars with 670 horsepower and a donut mode.

11:52In a world where the EPA, and CARB, and CAFE don't exist,

11:57this car probably wouldn't exist, as an EV at least.

12:01Dodge might still be building carbureted V8s in that world,

12:05but that's not the reality you, and I, and Dodge live in.

12:09If you want to charge your muscle car to exist in 2024,

12:13there's going to be an electric version.

12:15And so for that reason, whether you love it or hate it,

12:19if you think the sound is hokey,

12:21if you think the fact that it can't do burnouts is sad,

12:24I'm happy that this car exists.

12:27That there's still something that resembles an American muscle car on the market.

12:32That's what I want to see.

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