✅ Quick Takeaways Box
- Power: Up to 670 hp with Powershot; 0–60 in 3.3 seconds
- Battery: 100.5 kWh with 216–308 miles of range
- Sound: Fratzonic Exhaust System mimics Hellcat roar
- Pricing: Starts at $75K; available EV tax credit + discounts
- Fun Factor: Drift & Donut modes, AWD traction, track-ready stance
Over the course of the 2010s, Dodge underwent something of a transformation. Following Chrysler’s 2009 bankruptcy reorganization, Ram Trucks became a standalone brand, and most regular cars were discontinued. Dodge would focus primarily on muscle cars, with the Hellcat V8-powered Charger and Challenger at its core.
Production of those two long-running models ended in 2023. In their place comes what former brand chief Tim Kuniskis called "American e-Muscle," in the form of the fully electric Dodge Charger Daytona.
The 2025 Charger family is the first product built on Stellantis' STLA Large architecture, which can support internal combustion (ICE), hybrid, or fully electric vehicles (EVs). Dodge has announced plans for both EV and ICE versions, with the EV launching first and badged as the Daytona. Therein lies the controversy.
No V8, But Still Loud
American muscle car fans tend to be traditionalists. They like big, loud, rumbly, gas-burning V8 engines. The 2025 Charger Daytona certainly nails the big and loud part.
Compared to the 2023 Charger Scat Pack with the wide-body, the new car is almost 6 inches longer, 1.5 inches wider, and weighs almost 1,200 pounds more than the old, supercharged Hellcat Charger.
The loud part comes courtesy of what Dodge engineers call the Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust, a system of speakers and a resonance chamber that gives this car impressive sound production capabilities. Unlike many EVs, where the only indication the car is on is the displays lighting up, when you press the Start/Stop button, you know the Charger Daytona has come alive. Even in Auto mode, it gives a gentle roar upon awakening.
When leaving a nearby pizza place, my wife wanted to hear what it would sound like in its loudest mode. After starting the car, I switched to Drag/Track mode and blipped the accelerator a couple of times, immediately drawing surprised looks from people sitting at the outdoor tables. Dodge claims the exhaust sound will match the volume of the old Hellcats, but the sound is reduced in other modes, and there's also a Stealth mode so as not to annoy the neighbors when leaving early in the morning or arriving home late.
Honors the Past Without Copying It
While the absence of a V8 is perturbing the fans, there have been few complaints about the design. It’s a clean, modern look that offers just enough of the visual DNA of an early 1970s Charger coupe to indicate the lineage without looking retro. The front and rear fascias have brought back the “Fratzog,” a three-pointed split delta shape used as the Dodge logo from the early 1960s through the early 1970s.
One of the complaints about the old Charger was its trunk access. For this new model, the engineers incorporated a hatchback with the “trunk” lid attached to the rear glass, providing vastly more utility while retaining the traditional profile. With the rear seats folded, there's 37.9 cubic feet of cargo space, which is enough for a full extra set of track-day wheels, a jack, and tools. With the seats up, there's still 22.75 cubic feet.
The backseat room also gets a welcome upgrade. At 5-foot-10 inches with a long torso, I can sit very comfortably in the back of the Charger Daytona with head and knee room to spare.
Flashy Interior With a Few Tech Misses
Most of the interior is black and grey, but my test car had Demonic red seats that really spiced up the cabin. It also had the Sun and Sound package, which adds a glass roof and an 18-speaker Alpine audio system with a subwoofer.
The Scat Pack I drove has a 16-inch digital gauge cluster, while all models have a 12.3-inch infotainment touchscreen with Uconnect 5 tilted toward the driver. The software is easy to use and reasonably responsive, but unlike Google's built-in systems, it can't download additional apps. However, it does support wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
Below the center screen are haptic touch switches for the climate control, though you can't operate them by feel the way you would with traditional knobs or toggles. Fortunately, Dodge hasn’t succumbed to the silly trend of putting vent direction controls in the touchscreen, and these remain fully manual to quickly and easily redirect air flow. There are two USB-C ports in the front and two more in the rear, along with a wireless charging pad at the front of the center console.
In order to retain some of the traditional muscle car feel, Dodge designers have incorporated a pistol-grip shift lever that looks classic but doesn’t allow for manual shifting of the electric powertrain. There are a pair of paddles behind the steering wheel, but these are strictly to control the regenerative braking. Dodge missed a major opportunity here to replicate what Hyundai does on the Ioniq 5 N. When Drag/Track mode is engaged, the paddles should simulate transmission shifts with the exhaust playing along. It seems like a gimmick until you try it on the Hyundai, then you just find yourself laughing all the way around the track. Come on, Dodge! Give us fake shifting and rev limiters!
Range Is a Bit Limited, But It's Fast
This is a big, roomy car in the best American tradition. No one will sit down in the Charger Daytona and suspect it of originating anywhere but Detroit (although it is assembled across the river in Windsor, Ontario). Early on a Saturday morning, I opted to drive it to a Cars and Coffee event about 40 miles away. As a highway cruiser, this is an outstanding car and were it not for a relatively modest range and charging speeds, this would be fantastic for road trips.
Therein lies one of the potential problems with the Charger Daytona. The Scat Pack's 100.5-kilowatt-hour battery is rated for 241 miles of range per charge with the Track pack's wide performance tires. With summer tires, that drops to just 216 miles. The base R/T trim manages 308 miles. During my Saturday morning drive with the air conditioning on, it did manage 3.0 miles/kWh — roughly 280 miles of range — but that's not class-leading.
Further exacerbating the road tripping problem is that peak charging on a DC fast-charger is only 183 kilowatts, but it tends to taper off fairly quickly. Dodge quotes a 20 percent to 80 percent charge time of 42 minutes. That's slower than the 10 percent to 80 percent times of the Ioniq 9 (24 minutes) and the Mustang Mach-E (38 minutes).
When it’s time to just have some fun, the Charger Daytona meets the traditional expectations of a muscle car, which revolve around straight-line acceleration. With the Powershot button pressed, horsepower jumps from 630 to 670, completing 0-60 mph in 3.3 seconds and a quarter mile in 11.5. Despite less power, that’s a couple of tenths faster than the old Hellcat Redeye, thanks to better traction from all-wheel drive and the instant torque of the electric motors. Still, it can’t keep up with a Tesla Model S Plaid.
On a road course or a twisty mountain road, the Charger is surprisingly capable for a big three-ton car, though you can definitely feel the weight transferring. The steering has almost no feedback and feels artificial, and the sheer width means you have to be particularly alert on narrow roads.
For those times when you want more juvenile pursuits, there is also a Drift/Donut mode that decouples the front motor and lets the rear motor utterly shred the tires. It’s kind of fun for a bit… but gets expensive very quickly.
The Bottom Line
The 2025 Dodge Charger Daytona R/T starts at $61,590, including delivery charges, and the Scat Pack is priced at $75,187. As tested, the Scat Pack came to $80,220. That’s a lot of money for a car with notable flaws (most of which could be fixed with software updates). On the other hand, the old Charger was also flawed, and the quickest widebody Redeye variant started at over $93,000. With the $7,500 federal EV tax or lease credit (available until at least September 30th) plus some current dealer discounts of over $11,000, the Scat Pack's price can drop below $57,000.
So, is this fast enough to outrun the controversies around it? So far, it doesn’t look like it, with sales of just 4,299 units through June 30. That’s too bad, because I think the type of buyers who want muscle cars would actually be quite pleased with the Charger Daytona if they set aside their preconceptions about EVs and just gave it a chance. The Charger Daytona isn’t the ideal EV for everyone, but I’m pretty sure it’s right for a lot more people than have looked at it so far.
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