Dodge to phase out its Challenger and Charger muscle cars in shift towards EVs

Dodge is phasing out its gas-powered Charger and Challenger muscle cars by 2024 in favor of electric muscle cars, Motor Trend has reported. The company plans to introduce its first concept EV by 2022, followed by a plug-in hybrid and a third type of unknown vehicle. That follows Dodge’s announcement in July that it would introduce its first “eMuscle” car by 2024, promising it will “tear up the streets, not the planet.” 

At the time, the company and its parent Stellantis didn’t say what would happen to its internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, but it has now clarified that. “These cars that you know today will go out of production by the time we get to 2024,” Dodge Brand CEO Tim Kuniskis told Motor Trend in an interview.

I’m juggling knives because I’ve gotta keep two different huge factions happy because at some point those two factions will converge.

The new electric vehicles may use the ’60s triangular Fratzog name and logo to differentiate them. The first concept arriving in 2022 will be an electric muscle car, revealed in the next four or five months as a high-performance, drivable vehicle. The next model, a plug-in hybrid, will be a new car but not a Durango as some expected, according to Kuniskis. The third vehicle is unknown, but will be a “very, very, very, significant car at the end of the year,” he added. 

Diehard muscle car fans might not take the news well, though they can’t deny the superior performance of EVs. Dodge previously advertised the Challenger in “Demon” trim as the quickest 0-100MPH production car in the world, with the rather large caveat that it “excludes non-mass production vehicles [supercars] and hybrids/electric.”

Kuniskis acknowledged that the announcement could create friction. “I’m juggling knives because I’ve gotta keep two different huge factions happy because at some point those two factions will converge,” he said. “The problem is no one knows when they will converge. My job is to provide confidence, over the next 24 months, that we’re gonna do this.”