Hi, what are you looking for?
Floating “Artificial Leaves” Produce Clean Fuel
Solar & Storage Industry Charts Course For U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance Thanks To Inflation Reduction Act
Renewables to Equal 22% of U.S. Electricity Generation in 2022 — U.S. EIA Forecast
Peaking — A Theory of Rapid Transition
Virginia Offshore Wind Project Could Power 600,000 Homes, Create Over 1,000 Jobs
How Wind Energy Can Help Us Breathe Easier
U.S. Department Of Energy Finds Record Production & Job Growth In U.S. Wind Power Sector
Renewables to Equal 22% of U.S. Electricity Generation in 2022 — U.S. EIA Forecast
Peaking — A Theory of Rapid Transition
Decarbonizing Data Centers — It’s Fun!
Most Renewables Now Cheaper Than Cheapest Coal
Kenya Elections: Electric Mobility, Utility Scale Battery Storage, Energy Efficiency & Green Hydrogen Feature Prominently
More Electricity from Wind & Solar than Nuclear for 1st Time in USA
Funding Notice: Community Geothermal Heating & Cooling Design & Deployment
3 Barriers to Large-Scale Energy Storage Deployment
Cummins Calls Dibs On New Long Duration Energy Storage Iron Salt Formula
The Faraday Institution & NREL Sign MOU In Support of US & UK Joint Battery Research
A 100 Percent Renewable Electricity Calculator for the United States
New Tesla LFP Megapack Is Big — Really Big! (With Video)
Comparing The US & China On Climate, Economy, & Other Outcomes Should Be Deeply Humbling For America
San Diego Electric School Bus Puts Electricity Into The Grid
Can Virtual Power Plants Provide Revenue for Householders?
ERCOT & Tesla: How Virtual Power Plants Can Help Texas Electricity Grid & Save Lives
Energy Security at the Edge of the Grid
New Jersey is Ready for 100% Clean Electricity & Buildings
A Guide To Fuel Efficient Driving — Part Three (2022 Update)
New Heat Pumps For Old Apartments
Our Water Heaters Could Help Save the Wilderness
Heat Pumps Proved Themselves During A Harsh Maine Winter
How Tesla Reworked its Software to Survive the Semiconductor Chip Shortage
New Jersey is Ready for 100% Clean Electricity & Buildings
Rural Country Car Buyers Trust Local Car Dealers
Nearly 2,000 Zero-Emission Trucks & Buses on California Roads — New Data
A Guide To Fuel Efficient Driving — Part Three (2022 Update)
This Go-Anywhere, Eye-Catching E-Bike Is A Honey
Ford F-150 Lightning — CleanTechnica Review
Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Maintenance Cost Update at 3 Years & 27,000 Miles
75,000 Miles With My Tesla Model 3: Maintenance Costs, FSD (Beta), Hauling, Etc.
Putting The EcoFlow DELTA Pro Power Station To A Hard Test
22% Of New Car Sales Now Electric In The Netherlands!
Germany’s EV Share Cold Comfort Against 34% Shortfall In Overall Auto Market
UK Plugin EV Share Shrinks In July, BEVs Still Growing
French New Auto Sales Crash 37%, BEVs Still Growing
Norway’s Plugin Market Share Drops, BEVs Still Growing
This Go-Anywhere, Eye-Catching E-Bike Is A Honey
Ford F-150 Lightning — CleanTechnica Review
Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Maintenance Cost Update at 3 Years & 27,000 Miles
75,000 Miles With My Tesla Model 3: Maintenance Costs, FSD (Beta), Hauling, Etc.
Putting The EcoFlow DELTA Pro Power Station To A Hard Test
Ford F-150 Lightning — CleanTechnica Review
Tesla Q4 Shareholder Conference Call — Watch & Listen Here
Volkswagen Group — In-Depth Conference Call Highlights Company’s Focus On Transition
Bill McKibben On Unions, Tesla, & Elon Musk — CleanTechnica Interview
How To Watch & Listen To Tesla Q3 Earnings Call — Most Useful Livestream
The Dodge Charger SRT we know and love is dead. Long live the new king, the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT battery-electric muscle car.
For all you muscle car fans out there who are saddened because Dodge is planning to stop producing the Charger and Challenger, take heart. During the Dodge Speed Week event in Pontiac, Michigan this week, the company unveiled its Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept, an electric all-wheel drive car that will blow the doors off any combustion engine-powered production car ever manufactured by Dodge.
The press release accompanying the reveal eschews understatement. “The Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept muscles aside the boring BEV paradigm and replaces it with an electrified vehicle unlike any on the road today. A new propulsion system drives the Charger Daytona SRT Concept with performance that exceeds the Dodge brand’s famed SRT Hellcat engine, accompanied by an industry-first BEV exhaust sound.” The Concept “Drives like a Dodge, looks like a Dodge, and feels like Dodge,” the company says.
The Concept is an homage to the company’s past. The Daytona name pays tribute to the 1969 Dodge Charger that was the first car to break 200 mph on a NASCAR race track. The styling is a faithful recreation of the current production car which itself reflects the look of muscle cars from long ago, but is subtly tweaked to increase aerodynamic efficiency.
The whole car carries forward the chunky, iron fist in a velvet glove look of the current cars, but look closely and you will see a slot — what Dodge calls an R-Wing — at the front that directs air up and over the hood. The squared off roofline has been smoothed considerably to improve airflow. Inside EVs points out that there are carbon fiber intakes tucked into both sides of the front and rear lower fascias that provide an air curtain to further reduce drag.
A muscle car needs three things: a kickass engine, a shifter that looks like a girder from the Brooklyn Bridge, and an exhaust note that can wake the dead. The Charger Daytona SRT has all three. The 800 volt architecture and dual motor all-wheel drive powertrain — code named “Banshee” by Dodge — will sling the car down the track faster than even the infamous 700 horsepower Dodge Hellcat. The eRupt transmission with electro-mechanical shifting provides the fun of lightning-fast gear changes. And Dodge has created a first in the new electric car era, the Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust.
Curious about where the word “fratzonic” comes from? It’s derived from the Fratzog badge that graced Dodge muscle cars from 1962 through 1976. It has three arms with a circle in the middle and some of you will think it would look perfectly at home on a Mazda RX-7 with its unique trochoidal rotary engine. The Fratzog badge is displayed proudly at the front of the concept, and of course it is lighted when the car is in motion.
As Bloomberg Hyperdrive explains it, Dodge engineers took the firing order of a V-8 engine and used it to create a sound that’s amplified with air pushed through a chambered exhaust system. The result is a V-8 like rumble at low engine speeds and a 126 dB shriek under full acceleration. Wake up, people! That’s a DODGE you hear passing you in the high speed lane. Tim Kuniskis, the head honcho at Dodge, says that sound is what distinguishes a Dodge from what he calls the “nothingburgers” ordinary people drive. You can hear it in action near the end of the video below.
“The Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept exists because performance made us do it,” Kuniskis says. “Dodge is about muscle, attitude, and performance, and the brand carries that chip on its shoulder and into the BEV segment through a concept loaded with patents, innovations, and performance features that embody the electrified muscle of tomorrow. The Charger Daytona SRT Concept can do more than run the car show circuit; it can run a blazing quarter mile. And when it comes to product cycles, it outruns Darwin. Charger Daytona does more than define where Dodge is headed, it will redefine American muscle in the process.”
The car will have a Power Shot button on the steering wheel that will deliver a quick burst of acceleration. It also has Auto, Sport, Track, and Drag modes the driver can select to change the driving dynamics.
Much of the popularity of the Dodge brand is related to racing, particularly drag racing. Herman Young runs a drag racing YouTube channel called Demonology. (Demon is a label Dodge applies to its most powerful cars.) He told Bloomberg in Michigan this week, “If they’re gonna jump into this electric game, they need to be the king of electricity. They need to come with the power.”
Young isn’t resisting the EV revolution — his wife drives a Tesla Model Y — but he’s wistful when he talks about how quiet EVs are and what this will mean for the brotherhood of muscle. “Humans, we equate speed with sound and until we get used to making that adjustment, it’s going to take some of the excitement out of it. Sound is power in the era we grew up.”
He’s not wrong. The sound of an internal combustion engine is a visceral things that speaks to us in a primal way. The shriek of a V-10 Formula One engine churning down the back straight at Indianapolis Motor Speedway at close to 20,000 rpm would make your ears bleed and put a smile on your face as wide as the Pacific Ocean!
Speaking with Bloomberg this week in Michigan, Stephanie Brinley, an analyst for S&P Global Mobility, said about the Dodge Charger SRT Concept, “It’s opening as many questions as it’s answering, with all the sound and the multi-speed transmission. What it says most importantly is, ‘We will still be a muscle car, we will still give you that visceral reaction, we will be sure it triggers the emotions that the current car does.’”
Electric cars are different. Some people fear anything that is different. Harley-Davidson owners ride a Harley because it sounds like a Harley and that sound evokes an emotional response. Nobody asks what sort of mileage a Harley gets or how far it can go on a tankful of gasoline. If you are asking those questions, you are missing the whole point.
No one wants to know how much range the Dodge Challenger Daytona SRT has or how fast it can charge using a 350 kW EV charger. Those questions are irrelevant. Some may quibble that making a Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust is about as useful as making a machine to deposit replicas of horse droppings in the road behind a Model T. But they miss the point.
The production car will appeal to people who might never consider a “nothingburger” electric car. Once they are behind the wheel, the owners of these cars will learn about charging at home and starting every day with a full battery. They will learn about range and fast charging and regenerative braking and all the things that make driving an electric car so enjoyable.
Then they will tell their friends and co-workers and the people they meet at the drag strip about their cars and the EV revolution will move forward another notch. You may not covet one of these cars, but be grateful that Dodge has decided to make them. A whole generation of internal combustion powered cars is going out of production, to be replaced by fully electric cars. That should be cause for celebration.
Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Florida or anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. You can follow him on Twitter but not on any social media platforms run by evil overlords like Facebook.
#1 most loved electric vehicle, solar energy, and battery news & analysis site in the world. Support our work today!
Advertise with CleanTechnica to get your company in front of millions of monthly readers.
A recent article at CNBC broke news that Dodge will discontinue production of the Charger and Challenger muscle cars at the end of next...
Following up on US auto sales reports for the 4th quarter of 2021 as well as the full year 2021 compared to 2020 and...
US auto sales in 2019 were down 1.4% to 1.6% compared to 2018. That was before COVID-19 hit the United States and destroyed the...
It’s been a busy beginning of the year already, and we’ll have more to report on that shortly, but let’s first take a stroll...
Copyright © 2021 CleanTechnica. The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by and do not necessarily represent the views of CleanTechnica, its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries.