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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.