2025 Ram 1500 Ramcharger

Stellantis just revealed a PHEV Ram 1500. It has 140 miles of electric range. It has a 3.6L Pentastar that acts as a generator to charge the battery (no propulsion, and not the 4XE powertrain thankfully). It tows 14k. It has 2500lbs payload. It has IRS. It will charge your tools like Ford's Pro Power On Board system. It can add up to 50 miles of EV range in 10 minutes.

No pricing yet, and obvious Stellantis skepticism is in full effect but this thing seems just about perfect. Finally a PHEV truck that will do daily commuting and light truck stuff on electrons, with no range anxiety or extensive route planning!

Not the Ram charger is was expecting, but nice if they can make it work.

Seems like a good application for a turbo 4 instead of the 3.6, but that's just me. 

In reply to No Time :

They use a 2.0L turbo 4 in their Jeep 4XE PHEVs, so it surprised me to not see something similar here. But the 4XE stuff really seems to add lots of cost/complexity and is only rated 1mpg better than the Pentastar when it comes to combined fuel economy:

Personally, I'd much rather have a simple, naturally aspirated ICE (a la Prius, Volt, i3, etc ) than a turbo ICE in an application like this, and the Pentastar seems to be pretty well regarded and generally reliable.

Definitely keeping an eye on this one. Interesting use of the Ramcharger name; I mean, it makes sense in a way. It's a Ram that charges itself! 

Big questions for me are the overall cost and if heavy use will cause the battery depletion to outpace the generator. Will be interesting to see tests when they are closer to production. 

Series hybrids, big fan

refundable $100 "membership" to reserve a spot in line

I'd like to see maybe a single motor version, though. I don't need a 4.4s 0-60 on my truck and if i could save a few thousand that would be nice

In reply to gixxeropa :

Isn't the 4.4s 0-60 just a byproduct of the dual motors increasing the e-range?

Finally.  

Now let's see a combined cycle natural gas turbine generator/electric for a full ton truck...  it works for locomotives, it should be able work for road trucks.

Neat.

The Ramcharger is as perfectly fitting name resurrection as the Lightning.

I see this as different tools for different jobs. This is great for those that want a Lightning, but need to tow and/or do long-haul driving with it. For pretty much everybody else though, it's little more than buying a crate motor just to haul around in the frunk of a Lightning.

Tony Sestito said:

Definitely keeping an eye on this one. Interesting use of the Ramcharger name; I mean, it makes sense in a way. It's a Ram that charges itself! 
 

Totally can’t argue with that. 

and it'll only be $115k with Stelantis' famed reliability! 

yupididit said:

In reply to gixxeropa :

Isn't the 4.4s 0-60 just a byproduct of the dual motors increasing the e-range?

Yeah, thinking that performance comes at a cost is ICE thinking :)

I like it. A series hybrid is a lot better than a dual drivetrain setup, although you're still buying a big generator to carry around most of the time. At 175 hp sustained/225 hp peak, that generator can probably keep up with most towing demands - that's roughly the same peak power as a 2000 F-150 with the 4.6 V8. And even if the generator can't quite keep up, it's still going to extend range fairly significantly since you'd basically be backfilling what the 175 hp ICE can't do with the battery, minus some conversion losses.

The next step would be to make the generator a drop-in unit that could be rented for a trip. Drop it in the bed or the frunk, plug it into the charging system, go. The rest of the time, you're not lugging around an extra thousand pounds of vestigial ICE and you've got more space available. You'd also pay less for the truck since you wouldn't be buying a whole extra engine. It would be like renting a trailer.

Just had a thought: Ford should have used the Ranger name for its hybrid pickup but spelled it something like Range ’R. (Get it?)

This is a compelling package.

Hmmm, have a giant frunk and twice the EV range, or have the privilege of avoiding Electrify America....

I'm not a big Stellantis fan, but I have to admit this is a fairly compelling package.

7.2KW worth of on-board inverter capacity is pretty cool, but it would have been even cooler to see double that.

7.2KW is 240V at 30A, which is enough to power one residential air conditioning unit (hopefully) but not with a lot of overhead. If you had 240V at 60A you could use this thing as a really bona-fide residential backup generator with just an interlocked generator input on your panel. And 15KW is about 20 horsepower, so you would have the truck run at idle and power the generator that way all night long.

I really like this idea.  For most of my day to day, I'd be in full electric mode, never kicking on the ICE.  Those times I take trips (which, for Texas is always long), I can still be electric for most of the trip, probably able to charge enough while stopping at Buc-ee's.  If not, I know I've got the ICE as a backup. 
Since it's an EV with a generator, the typical Chrysler transmission issues shouldn't crop up.

The only barrier will be price. 

-Rob

You know, I just came back from towing the two car enclosed trailer 2000 miles with my 2010 Cummins. All-up GVW right about 20k, which means the trailer is 12k or so. I wonder how this thing would have handled the trip?

Ironically, one of the challenges would have been getting the truck and trailer through normal gasoline pumps instead of the big truck stop pull-throughs.

This things seems absolutely brilliant as the "do it all" truck.  145 mile EV only range for commute and errand running.  14,000lb. tow capacity allows anything any typical half ton truck owner would pull for a weekend boat trip up north or camper trailer, or dragging home that next racecar project.  ...and 690 mile range on a full charge and a full tank of gas?!  Brilliant.  No need to worry about charging on the road, just find a gas station.  Range anxiety gone.  

Everybody loved HOW the F-150 Lightning towed, just not how far it towed, as the range was atrocious.  This seemingly would have all the stellar towing positives (no downshifts/gear hunting, instant torque) without any of the range downside.  

I'm sure it'll be expensive but it seems to be a killer tool for the job, and makes way more sense in a truck application than a pure EV (at least with currently available tech).  

Rodan said:

Finally.  

Now let's see a combined cycle natural gas turbine generator/electric for a full ton truck...  it works for locomotives

It does? Other than a Russian prototype, I'm not aware of any other natural gas turbine locomotives. Turbines have been tried in rail applications and have never panned out terribly well. Too fuel inefficient when adjusting throttle, too fragile, top sensitive to dirt and vibrations and impact, too much specialized maintenance. The Union Pacific gas turbine electrics were moderately successful but as soon as the price of Bunker C fuel oil went up, they were pretty much finished. The United Aircraft Turbotrains were never as successful as hoped and were plagued with fires and leaks and other woes. And the RTG and Rohr Turboliners were never successful enough to warrant more than 13 of them. Now, there have been conventional diesel engines setup to run CNG/LNG in diesel-electroc locomotives to a modicum of success, but they haven't found widespread adoption.

In reply to NickD :

I mostly meant the separation of generation/propulsion, which has, until now, not really been tried in a mass produced truck application.  Combined cycle LNG turbines are demonstrating very good efficiency in power plants and aboard ship... if that could translate to vehicle applications it could be an option for towing heavy/long distance.  

gixxeropa said:

I'd like to see maybe a single motor version, though. I don't need a 4.4s 0-60 on my truck and if i could save a few thousand that would be nice

It would be 2wd, though, and a lot of people would balk at the idea.

Electric motors are weird, the bigger they are the more efficient they are.  I suspect that two motors is still lighter/less complex/more compact than one motor and a transmission/driveshaft/differential to get 4wd.  You don't have to engineer large dedicated spaces to route electrons, either, so the battery can be larger.

They'd still probably engineer in a foot of empty space between the skateboard and the cab/bed