If you told someone in 2020 that four short years later, automakers would start rolling back aggressive battery-powered vehicle roadmaps, you’d have received one of two reactions: Either shock, or something to the effect of “well, duh.” Still, the great BEV pull-back continues. Ram is pushing its all-electric pickup truck down the road, and is refocusing on the range-extender Ramcharger by aiming to have it on sale in 2025.
As for why this product timing switcheroo happened, it’s no secret that battery electric pickup truck demand has been softer than some manufacturers likely expected. Ram states, “The decision to launch Ramcharger first was driven by overwhelming consumer interest, maintaining a competitive advantage in the technology and slowing industry demand for half-ton BEV pickups.”
Unlike pretty much any other truck ever, the Ram 1500 Ramcharger is a series plug-in hybrid where the engine functions solely as a generator and isn’t connected to the wheels. As it stands, nobody offers a series hybrid pickup truck in North America, although Scout has announced plans for one. Considering what trucks need to do, a series plug-in hybrid drivetrain makes a ton of sense because it can glide around on electric power alone for most commuting, but then take advantage of refuelling infrastructure when towing, which can significantly affect range on electric trucks.
Going into more detail, the Ram 1500 Ramcharger features a 92 kWh battery pack and a 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 onboard, and Ram claims 690 miles of range if you run through both the battery pack and the fuel tank. What’s more, with 14,000 pounds of towing capacity, 663 horsepower, and a claimed zero-to-60 mph time of 4.4 seconds, there’s a pretty decent chance this will be a great tow rig.
Opening up order books at some point in the next six-ish months seems like a pretty smart move, and given Stellantis’ history of missing initial launch timelines, something coming out ahead of schedule makes a pretty good impression. It’s also great to see Stellantis focusing on a desirable product for North America, because vehicles like the Jeep Wagoneer, Dodge Charger Daytona EV, and Dodge Hornet just aren’t it.
However, amid this great news, there’s one elephant in the room: How competitive will the Ram REV be come 2026? Up to two years is an eternity in the EV space, as battery cell chemistries continue to advance and new products keep popping up. The Ford F-150 Lightning will likely be due for a mid-cycle refresh by then, Chevrolet should have Silverado EV production ramped up by 2026, Rivian’s still doing its Rivi-thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla applies rolling updates to the Cybertruck over the next few years. Stellantis simply can’t sit on the Ram 1500 REV for a year, it needs to keep iterating, even if only slightly.
In any case, we look forward to driving the Ram 1500 Ramcharger sooner than expected. On paper, it really seems like the sort of truck North America needs, especially since we generally buy vehicles on edge cases. Even if that range extender rarely gets used, it sounds like it could be a nice thing to have when it’s needed.
(Photo credits: Ram)
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It’ll probably cost $100k, so unlikely to be something I’ll buy new.
Seeing the Pacifica PHEV and Jeep 4xe vehicles don’t exactly have a great rep at the moment, will probably not want to be an early adopter anyway.
From what I’ve read, even the Mazda CX90 PHEV had quite a bit of teething problems out of the gate. So it isn’t just Stellantis.
This series hybrid thing and mention of a next gen Lightning got me wondering what the next gen Cybertruck is going to look like (and given it’s (un)popularity/low preorder fulfillment rate, how soon we’ll get it).
Honda went much more traditional with the second gen Ridgeline. I wonder if CT 2.0 will look a lot more like this Ramcharger (without an internal combustion engine of course). Trucks are for doing truck things, and CT doesn’t do truck things well.
That said all in all I like the concept of this Ramcharger. I have a camper I need to pull around, and though I’d love to electric, that just isn’t feasible. This would be.
Weight? Yes.
None of this surprises me. Electric vehicles are great in a vacuum but in the full scale is where they really show their shortcomings. And I say this as someone who owns an electric vehicle. I’m thankful I have my gas backups as needed, just in case.
I’ve asked this question before without getting a good answer: When you are towing at or close to the weight limit and you run out of battery power in a hundred miles or whatever and then you are running on range extender only, how does that affect your speed or ability to tow, are either or both reduced and if so how much?
I asked originally as a comparison to David’s i3, in which case when the extender kicks in, it limits the speed that the vehicle can travel at compared to what it can do with a full battery.
This may not make a difference for some people but around here people are often pulling pretty big loads at 80mph or more…
If I were to guess, there will be a tow mode that gets the charging going at something like 50% of battery charge. I don’t think that the range extender to battery will ever be “hand to mouth” on power, and that they will aim to keep performance as consistent as possible.
Yeah that makes sense, I’m just wondering what exactly the limitations might be. Everyone is all excited about 600hp, a 14,000 lb tow capacity, and a V6 that nobody would ever want to tow any kind of sizable load with by itself. But nobody is filling in the blanks as to A) Cost and B) what is realistic capability when you have a 10,000lb trailer with a flat front face and need to cross Texas where all the traffic runs at 85mph+.
Can the V6 keep up when the juice is actively draining with a big load OR will it be limited to 60mph or something like that. I think people are expecting that it’ll be like (or better than) a 6.2l GM V8 running at top speed with gas stops every three hours while towing a popup camper but I don’t know if I see anything like that.
I do think it’ll be great to get your boat to the lake that’s 50 miles away and that’s maybe what it’ll be used for but you can do that with a current EV truck as well. Everybody thinks they want to do max tows cross-country every other week and every truck on the market needs to support that or it’s tagged as useless… Reality is a RAM 2500 diesel will likely still be better, faster, and surprisingly perhaps FAR cheaper than this thing.
I had no idea of the BMW i3 range extender’s limitations when actually range extending until David happened to mention it awhile back, I would have thought that someone writing one of these very pro-RamCharger posts would have asked RAM to weigh in on this particular aspect of the truck by now. Now it really intrigues me!
The pentastar is rated for about 285 HP, assuming the generated is properly sized I would think it could keep up. As junkinthefrunk said the key works be kicking on the ice while you still have battery capacity remaining to handle hills or other high demand situations
It shouldn’t affect it at all, as the engine is just supplying more electricity. The site says it can supply power to the engine when needed, so I would assume the default is to power the battery unless you switch modes.
I don’t think stellantis needs to worry about the Silverado ev, all 8 people who wanted one probably have it. Just looking it up showed my nearest dealerships cutting up to 10k (!) off msrp
I am super interested in the Ramcharger and glad to hear this. I am worried about first year Stellantis quality/reliability and wasn’t willing to wait until they sorted things out and started making lower trim versions of it, so we bought an F-150 Powerboost hybrid.
Finally a truck that pulls like a train, literally.
This makes me very curious about a smaller much more aerodynamic car with this setup. How small could they go with the battery and range extender with something more along the lines of a model 3? While better than a pure EV in getting regular people to adopt the tech and save gas, 92kw battery packs aren’t making much of a dent in our material usage.
If it’s good enough for basically every diesel locomotive it ought to be good enough for a pickup truck. Sign me up when I can get one under 40k
I think you’ll be waiting for a long time. That is the biggest killer of my enthusiasm for something like this. It’ll probably be at least 70-80k with prices much higher in reality with its limited availability.
Unfortunately it looks that way. I can dream though
I know why they are including the pentastar in this package but damn. Hopefully this first swing is a good one without Chrysler’s typical quality issues so we can get a better, more efficient one in a few years!
The good news continues
I am super interested in this drivetrain for future swaps. Long as I can figure out an aftermarket controller for it…. This would be amazing in a 70s IH Travelette.
BEV trucks are hot garbage outside of the R1T and the Maverick has proven that the people can’t get enough of hybrid trucks….so this makes sense
I really like this concept. Now to plot out their depreciation curve to see how affordable they’ll be off lease.
Stellantis + EV has to be about as steep of a curve as can be found outside of luxury vehicles, right?