Dodge Charger Daytona EV: Track impressions with data review

For something boasting nearly 700 horsepower, the 2025 Dodge Charger Daytona’s press rollout seemed fairly subdued. No smoke machine, no Night Ranger-grade lasers.

One of the first comments out of the mouth of Dodge Brand CEO Matt McAlear: Approach the Charger Daytona “as a muscle car first and an EV second.”

Okay, Matt, you’re on.

Indeed, the new Charger Daytona–orderable now and expected for early 2025 delivery–is available with either 496 horsepower in R/T trim or a whopping 670 horsepower in Scat Pack trim.

[2024 Dodge Charger Daytona: The muscle car goes electric]

That’s slightly more and slightly less power, respectively, for the sporty and super-sporty variants of the previous Charger and Challenger, but here’s the real difference: While those previous Dodge hotrods used V8 power, the newest Charger takes its name seriously, utilizing a 100.5 kWh battery pack to drive dual 250 kW electric motors.

Dodge’s pitch is that electrification is the best current (get it?) way to create the kind of performance customers expect from their most muscley vehicles. The company isn’t technically wrong–EVs are frequently among the hardest-accelerating cars on today’s market–but it feels like there’s also a buried lede in that claim referencing corporate fuel economy and emissions standards making it more difficult and less economically viable to just cam up and pressurize a monster V8 and send it out into the wild.

At any rate, the new Charger looks the part. It cuts a handsome, well-proportioned figure, evocative of the B-body Chargers of the late 1960s. That’s a conscious decision, according to the exterior and interior stylists in attendance, who cited not only lines and curves, but details and Easter eggs lifted from arguably the best-looking Chargers.

Photography Credit: J.G. Pasterjak

Again, though, the buried lede of that handsome and well-proportioned shape is the sheer size of the automobile. Dodge claims that the new Charger, at nearly 80 inches wide (without mirrors), is as wide as it’s legally allowed to be without adding heavy truck-style additional marker lamps.

We’re not sure that’s exactly something to brag about.

The new Charger is over 17 feet long, with a 122-inch wheelbase. The wheelbase itself is less than 2 feet shorter than a whole-ass Miata.

Photograph Courtesy Dodge

From 30 feet away and without any visual context, it’s good-looking. As you get closer, the thing fills your peripheral vision to the point of comic overkill.

The roof sits nearly 5 feet above the ground, and while viewing the car from the door, the front and rear bumpers may as well be in neighboring counties. While electrification brought crazy power and torque, housing that 100.5 kWh battery pack takes up some serious real estate.

At least the space is used efficiently. This two-door car has back seats rivaling those of most four-door sedans, and it’s also a true hatchback, with enough space in the back to swallow a whole set of wheels and tires.

Photography Credit: J.G. Pasterjak

Up front, the cockpit area is very driver-focused, with screens and gauges angled toward the driver, and those late-’60s design cues and textures work very nicely in their new, modern context. The squared-off steering wheel is nicely sized, but there’s a lot going on in those areas as far as buttons and switches are concerned.

Ironically, the PowerShot button, which unleashes the full fury of the Scat Pack’s 670 horsepower for 10 seconds at a time, is located low and on the right side of the steering hub, forcing the driver to remove a hand from the wheel to engage full-power mode.

All of that size we referenced earlier isn’t just for show, either. It hints at mass that is in abundance in this chunky hunk of muscle machine. Dodge lists the curb weight of the 670-horsepower Scat Pack variant at 5767 pounds. For those keeping score at home, that’s 300 pounds more than a 2010 Toyota Tundra crew cab with a 5.7-liter V8.

It’s a LOT of car, and certainly most EVs are these days because of those heavy battery packs, but the Charger weighs in at around half a ton more than cars like the Tesla Model S or Hyundai Ioniq 5 N–and nearly 1800 pounds more than a Model 3 Performance. Yikes.

So while the Scat Pack does throw 670 horsepower to all four wheels, those horses are heavily laden. The power-to-weight ratio is more in line with cars like the BMW M3, making it seem far less special, especially in a category of cars with increasingly ludicrous performance.

Acceleration is solid–Dodge claims 3.3 seconds to reach 60–but not spectacular given the competition in the category. It feels weird saying a 3.3-second zero-to-60 is “not spectacular,” but in a category where the 3-second barrier is regularly flirted with and even broken, it takes a big statement to make a splash in this pond.

All 2025 Charger Daytona Scat Packs will include the Track Package, which comes with some big ol’ six-piston Brembo calipers pinching 16-inch, two-piece rotors up front, four-piston rear calipers, 20x11- and 20x11.5-inch wheels wrapped in 305mm- and 325mm-wide Goodyear Eagle F1 tires and a multi-mode adaptive suspension.

Photograph Courtesy Dodge

On track, the Charger is–somewhat shockingly–fairly nimble despite its heft. It turns in well, with better than average feel and feedback, although the mass does take some time to redirect.

Braking, likewise, has surprisingly good feel and feedback despite being brake by wire and heavily leveraging regenerative braking. Braking is where you most feel the 3 tons of car under you, with all that mass heaving forward to take a set on those front tires and easily overwhelming them, triggering ABS intervention. It takes a few laps to get used to using the brakes at 100%, but once you get the feel right, the action is, again, surprisingly effective considering how much mass it’s arresting.

The downside to those brakes is they insist on monogamy. For example, it would have felt great to trail off the brakes–which provide good enough feedback for effective trail braking–while preloading the driveline with the gas pedal–or electricity pedal, or accelerator, or whatever we’re calling it these days.

But whenever the car senses any simultaneous operation of both pedals, no matter how slight, it shuts you down. The car instantly goes into limp mode, killing power and waiting for you to remove all feet from all pedals for long enough for it to reset.

And that's a bummer because there's definitely more performance available with the ability to two-pedal things. Particularly for cars of considerable mass and relatively soft suspension like the Charger, the time spent moving your right foot between pedals is time that could easily be used to more precisely control the rate and ferocity of that weight transfer.

Maybe the most impressive facet of our track sampling was the control of the vertical motion by the adaptive dampers. Attenuating that sort of mass is no small feat, but the Charger took the heaves like a champ, easily able to maintain full throttle over curbs and small yumps with little to no chassis upset.

While the handling loop at Radford Racing School, location of the press rollout, was fairly tight and low-speed, we were able to find a few bright spots in our VBox data. Notably, the Charger Daytona gripped above 1g laterally at more than a few spots, and we saw peak braking at or near the 1g mark as well. Peak acceleration reached near 0.4g, putting it in league with the likes of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, at least for limited stretches.

That said, though, the Charger Daytona, even in Scat Pack with Track Package form, is not really at home on track. The “track” mode option in the driving option menu even trims over 100 horsepower off the front electric motor to reduce power-on understeer and bring more balance to the chassis.

We tried a few laps in “sport” mode, which unlocks all the available power, but the throttle was extremely touchy, and the power simply overwhelmed the front suspension during long corner exits, slowing lap times.

We found the best laps on the tight course were available in track mode with judicious use of the PowerShot button when we could actually use the additional thrust. On a longer track with more full-throttle operation, track mode may be the fastest solution, but it certainly will feel ungainly on many corner exits.

Photograph Courtesy Dodge

But the bigger question is who is going to even drive this car on track, anyway? And even bigger than that is who’s actually the customer base for this car?

Dodge’s answer to that question was that its customers in general are younger and hipper than the industry average, which is kind of a non-answer because it doesn’t really specify whether those young, hip people are buying Hornets or just aching for a 3-ton electric muscle car without cool stuff like advanced torque vectoring that its competition has.

It seems to us that traditional hotrodders aren’t particularly amped up for an electric muscle car, and the kinds of tech early adopters and performance enthusiasts that gravitate toward performance EVs aren’t jonesing for the old-school vibes of the Charger.

Oh yeah, we haven’t even mentioned how those old-school vibes are augmented by Dodge’s “Fratzonic” exhaust, which blasts a virtual exhaust note through a series of speakers and resonance chambers in the rear of the car.

Photograph Courtesy Dodge

It’s … kind of cool? Maybe?

Look, we actually kind of like the concept of a virtual exhaust. Sound is an important ingredient in the overall emotional enjoyment of anything, particularly a high-performance car.

But the execution leaves a bit on the table in our opinion. With the hardware in place, the option exists to produce any sound imaginable. Any waveforms, frequencies and effects are available with some simple coding.

And Dodge chose to go with … a retro-sounding V8 rumble. Why not leverage that technology to allow EVs to create their own unique sonic identity rather than imitating something they clearly aren’t?

BMW went out and got legendary film composer Hans Zimmer to design sounds for its EV lineup, coming up with something that’s pretty cool, unique and identifiable.

Dodge sampled a V8 and threw some delay and flanging on it. There’s no rules, and the technology to defy expectations and create excitement is sitting right there, so why not use it?

Photograph Courtesy Dodge

And that’s kind of the story with the whole Charger Daytona experience. Yeah, it’s kind of cool, but far from truly special in the segment considering what else is out there.

And at a $73,000 MSRP and sticker prices north of $82,000 for a Scat Pack with Track Package, it’s not even a bargain, especially when considering its old-school hotrod approach.

It will be interesting to see who these cars actually appeal to and what the eventual buyers actually end up doing with them. And the 1000-plus-horsepower SRT version dropping later in 2025 should hopefully bring the proper amount of performance to the platform that’s somewhat absent in these versions.

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