First Dodge EV Concept Will Be a Drivable High Performance Machine
Dodge EV concept car will show their real world capabilities when it debuts later this year.
During the media preview day of 2021 Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge event in Metro Detroit, we had a chance to sit down with Dodge boss Tim Kuniskis. While we were there to talk about the unique automotive festival, Kuniskis surprised everyone in attendance by dropping the first news on the brand’s upcoming Never Lift program. That program will detail every debut date for the Dodge Challenger and Charger over the next two years, but we won’t know exactly what is debuting on each of those dates. It could be something as simple as a new stripe package or it could be a new high performance model, but the point of that program is that Dodge has plans to continue to update their muscle cars in their final years of this generation.
The calendar for the Never Lift program will be introduced later this year and around the same time, Dodge will introduce their first electric concept car. However, unlike other brands which have debuted concepts with a static display vehicle and a video of the vehicle in action, the Dodge EV concept will be a fully operable, high performance driver.
Dodge EV is Coming
Back in July, Stellantis held their virtual EV Day program, which consisted of several videos from their various brands talking about their future electric vehicle plans. Surprisingly, the Dodge brand was one of those included in the EV Day program and in their video, which you can view below, Kuniskis made it clear that Dodge was going all-in on electric performance.
Kuniskis made a comment about a “charger making a Charger faster” and there were several shadowy images of what could be both old and new Chargers. There was even a graphic at the end of the video showing the mysterious electric vehicle doing a smoky four-wheel burnout. The images shown here are from that video.
That video talked about the Dodge EV muscle car coming for 2024, but based on what Kuniskis said at the Roadkill Nights media day, we will get our first look at the electric performance car in the fourth quarter of this year.
Ready to Run Concept
It has become a common practice in the automotive industry for a company to debut a future vehicle before they actually have a working version of that vehicle. The best example in recent time is the new GMC Hummer, which debuted with a video of the all-electric truck kicking up sand and promises of 1,000 horsepower. Immediately after that debut, we learned that General Motors didn’t actually have a working, driving example of the truck that debuted in that video. They had the static display vehicle and they had the electric drivetrain technology, but they didn’t have a vehicle that would do what was shown in the vehicle.
That isn’t how Dodge will introduced their first electric vehicle.
When the Dodge EV Concept car debuts sometime during the fourth quarter of this year, it will be a fully operable, high performance driver. It will be able to do everything that Dodge claims in the real world, not just on video with promises of future real world capabilities.
Most importantly, the Dodge EV concept is expected to offer performance capabilities to challenge the best. The best EV in terms of performance is Tesla, so we would expect that the Dodge EV will be engineered to take on the likes of the Model S or, if the Dodge is a bit smaller, the Model 3.