Why The Dodge Charger Daytona R/T EV Is The Best Showcase Of EV Advantages So Far

Watching the EV market mature is a little like watching a toddler running with scissors in that it looks like a bunch of companies running around dangerously as they try to figure out what they should be doing.

Tesla came to the market first with a sports car (typically inexpensive, light, and fun to drive) and then with a sedan (the Model S), which had decent performance but didn’t look as powerful as it was.

Jaguar came to market with their award-winning I-Pace, a better-looking vehicle in a racing SUV design (SUVs typically aren’t raced). Then he set up a road race series for the car, which Waymo also used for autonomous cabs with mixed results.

It just felt like people designing these cars didn’t get what EVs were best at, so let’s revisit this as I argue that the Dodge Daytona R/T EV is likely the closest to what an EV car should have initially been. 

What EVs Are Good At

EVs are best for straight-line acceleration and relatively short hops after charging at home. They aren’t good (though they are getting better) at distance driving, road courses (they tend to be heavier than gas cars), or for folks who don’t have garages to charge in.

Thus, the kind of car that would truly showcase EVs capabilities wouldn’t be an SUV, typical sedan, or even a sports car, it would be a muscle car because Muscle cars aren’t long haul cruisers, don’t have great range, but they do excel at straight-line performance just like EVs do.

In short, the drive train for an EV is better for a Muscle car or drag car than nearly any other automotive configuration. Because of this advantage, Tesla regularly beat the crud out of dragsters at dragstrips. Watch a Tesla dust a Hellcat at the dragstrip here.

I’m not arguing that EVs should only be muscle cars, but that the muscle car configuration and drag racing would be a far better showcase of the EV’s advantages than a road course. For instance, at Formula-E, the electric road racing series, drivers often run out of juice on the track and push their cars back to the pits by themselves, highlighting the EV’s range weakness, not its performance strengths.

The Next-Gen Dodge Charger

In its base, the Dodge Charger Daytona R/T costs under $60K, and you can lease it (with a $6K downpayment or trade-in) for $599 a month right now with 0% APR for 72 months. While this base model only has around 500 HP, the more expensive Scat Pac ($74K) version has an impressive 670 HP, 627 pounds of max torque, it will hit 60 in 3.3 seconds, and it’ll complete the quarter mile in 11.5 seconds. Both cars are All-Wheel-Drive only, which means they’ll almost always hook up, but burnouts will be problematic, just as they are on Teslas.

Now all-wheel-drive EVs have two problems (sort of) as muscle cars, burnouts are difficult if not impossible to do so you are racing on cold tires, and there is no engine noise because these cars don’t use a gas engine but electric motors. Dodge has addressed the latter with what may be the best artificial engine sound so far in an EV, but the burnout issue is likely to remain.

Now, they certainly could allow for burnouts, put a line lock on the front and rear brakes that could be used for each set of wheels separately, and then allow the driver to decouple the front or rear wheels while doing a burnout. However, EVs are heavy, and while this might be a low risk on the track and streets, this would likely result in blown tires and accidents, and, I expect, Dodge didn’t want the related liability.

Wrapping Up:

I’ve followed EVs for much of my life, and it is incredibly annoying to watch car company after car companies miss what the cars are suitable for and misposition them. Dodge here didn’t do that, and they are sadly rather unique. The Dodge Charger EV R/T or SCAT Pack are better EV configurations given where an EV’s strengths and weaknesses are than virtually every other EV on the road. Sadly, we didn’t start out with more muscle cars, and I expect EVs would have had more success earlier had we gone this route.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst covering automotive technology and battery developments at Torque News. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.