Dodge’s new electric muscle car can have a gas engine if you want

With new 2024 Dodge Charger, muscle car shoppers will have some serious decisions to make. First, it will be available as an electric car with batteries and electric motors or gasoline-powered. Second, it will be available with two or four doors.

Muscle car shoppers will face some important decisions with the 2024 Dodge Charger. First, the new Charger will be available as a battery-powered electric car or with a gasoline engine. And for the first time it will be available with two or four doors. Also, unlike most EVs, the electric Chargers will be extremely loud, at least when drivers want them to be, thanks to a series of baffles and chambers that will blast sound to the outside world. But while it will certainly be fast and loud, there is one thing that would have been previously inconceivable in a muscle car. While the Charger will have the option of a traditional petroleum-burning engine, one thing that won’t be available is a V8. And that option will not become available in the future, either, according to Dodge. When gasoline-driven Chargers go into production early next year, they will be powered by turbocharged six-cylinder engines. If buyers want the biggest, brawniest Charger, they’ll have to go with battery power. The most powerful and fastest version, at least initially, will be the fully electric Dodge Charger Daytona Scat Pack, capable of producing up to 670 horsepower from two electric motors. All versions of the new Charger, whether electric or gas, will have all-wheel-drive. The 2024 Charger is replacing two cars that have come to define the Dodge brand since at least the early 2000s. The four-door Charger and two-door Challenger were mechanically very closely related, and neither had been substantially redesigned in at least a decade. Defying auto industry norms, sales of both models continued to be strong throughout their lives, even increasing in their latter years of production, which came to a close at the end of 2023. Because of the popularity of those two cars, Dodge, which long sold cushy family sedans, cute compact cars like the Neon, and even the first minivan, now proudly self-identifies as a muscle car brand. For today’s Dodge, anything with a whiff of public virtue must explained through an appeal to speed.