Dodge plans gas-powered Charger but will cut cheaper electric variant
'Rarity does not make a collectible. You need to have demand for it,' said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions. 'You can't presume that this will be a Charger Daytona of 1970. They couldn't sell those originally and years later they were collectible.'
Fiorani said it's risky to bet on a car of today becoming something that brings big dollars in the years to come, even when the numbers of those made and sold are relatively small.
Still, Dodge will continue to offer the more powerful and expensive electric Charger Daytona Scat Pack for the upcoming model year, even as it prepares to launch several gas-powered versions.
While it's not clear how many Dodge Charger Daytonas will be produced this year, so far the sales picture is showing a fairly light impact. Electric Charger sales — the company did not distinguish between versions — for the first three months of this year were at 1,947. Granted, they were just beginning to arrive in showrooms in January after months of delays.
However, the automaker likely had higher hopes. Fiorani noted that he'd recently driven by a Dodge dealership and saw a row of Chargers waiting to be sold.
In a statement, Dodge CEO Matt McAlear said 'production of the Dodge Charger Daytona R/T is postponed for the 2026 model year as we continue to assess the effects of U.S. tariff policies. The Charger's flexible, multi-energy STLA Large platform allows us to focus on the Charger Daytona Scat Pack's performance as the world's quickest and most powerful muscle car, add the new four-door model to the Charger mix for the 2026 model year and lean into the new Charger SIXPACK models that will launch in the second half of the year.'
Sixpack refers to the engine, the inline-six Hurricane, which will come in 550-horsepower or 420-horsepower variants.
The current electric Scat Pack promises a peak power base of 630 horsepower with a limited push-button burst to 670 horsepower called the Power Shot. The Dodge website lists the Scat Pack all-wheel drive with a starting price of $73,985, excluding destination charge.
Adding gas-powered versions to the lineup is not a surprise, as Dodge had previously said that was the plan. However, the decision, reported earlier by MoparInsiders.com, to end the electric R/T's run so soon does highlight how the market has changed, both in terms of the slower adoption of electric vehicles and President Donald Trump's embrace of tariffs. The Charger Daytona is assembled at the Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario, but the batteries initially were to come from South Korea.
Fiorani offered some perspective on the potential tariff impact, however.
'Everybody is leaning on tariffs for every change in production or sales, whether real or not,' he said.
Market realities are, however, what they are.
More: Detroit automakers want Silicon Valley talent, but need Michigan engineering knowledge
'The idea that an internal combustion engine version would hit the market better at the moment is a strong one,' according to Fiorani. 'Buyers haven't warmed up to EVs as a performance vehicle yet, especially since every EV is a performance model now.'
Fiorani noted also that the company's planned shift in production volume toward the gas-powered Charger would also take the focus off the less expensive EV version — the R/T was listed with a starting price of $59,595, not counting destination.
'(They) kind of want to focus on the vehicle that will make money versus the entry-level models that will sell on price,' Fiorani said.
The moves for Dodge follow news that Ram is also adjusting its electric plans. Crain's Detroit Business, citing a memo to suppliers, reported this week that the electric Ram 1500 REV would be delayed until summer 2027, a year later than what the automaker told the Free Press in January, and the extended range Ramcharger is being pushed from later this year to early next year.
More: U.S. auto industry wants trade deal with Canada and Mexico to be Trump's priority
The company, in a statement provided by spokesman Nick Cappa, cited "slowing consumer demand for half-ton" battery electric pickups and noted that "we also are extending the quality validation period for the Range Extended Ram to support a successful launch and the highest build quality."
Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dodge pivots on future EV offerings after lackluster sales
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14 minutes ago
'Agonizing': How Alaska's pivotal Republican senator decided to vote for Donald Trump's bill
WASHINGTON -- Just after midnight, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was pacing in a Senate hallway, alone and looking concerned. It had suddenly become clear to all her Republican colleagues that her vote would be their best chance of passing President Donald Trump's sweeping bill of tax and spending cuts. Had she decided whether she would support the bill? 'No,' Murkowski said, shaking her head and putting her hand up to signal that she didn't want to answer any questions. Around 12 hours later, after she had convinced Senate leaders to change the bill to benefit her state and voted for the legislation, ensuring its passage, Murkowski said the last day had been 'probably the most difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period that I have encountered.' 'And you all know," she told reporters after the vote at midday Tuesday, 'I've got a few battle scars underneath me.' Murkowski has been in the Senate for nearly 23 years, and she has taken a lot of tough votes as a moderate Republican who often breaks with her party. So she knew what she was doing when she managed to leverage the pressure campaign against her into several new programs that benefit her very rural state, including special carveouts for Medicaid and food assistance. 'Lisa can withstand pressure,' said Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a fellow Republican moderate and longtime friend. Collins said she spoke to Murkowski on Monday when she was still undecided, and 'I know it was a difficult decision for her, and I also know how much thought she put into it.' Texas Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has also served with Murkowski for two decades, was more blunt: 'She knows how to use her leverage,' he said. The 887-page bill narrowly passed by the Senate on Tuesday — and now headed back to the House for possible passage — mentions California three times, Texas twice and New York not at all. But Alaska is in the bill 19 times, from new oil and gas lease sales in the state to tax breaks for Alaska fisheries and whalers to tribal exemptions for work requirements. Even with all the provisions for Alaska, Murkowski was deeply torn up until the hours just before the vote, when the entire Senate was focused on what she would do — and as Republicans were pressuring her to support the bill and move the party one step closer to giving Trump a win. She had always supported the bill's tax cuts and extensions, but she had serious concerns about the repercussions of cutting Medicaid in her state and around the country. Murkowski eventually decided to support the legislation in the hours after the Senate parliamentarian approved language to allow several states with the worst error rates in the food stamp program — including Alaska — to put off having to pay a greater portion of the cost of federal benefits, and after Republicans added a $50 billion fund proposed by Collins to help rural hospitals that might otherwise be hurt by Medicaid cuts. Even with the fund included, Collins was one of three Republicans who voted no on the bill, arguing that the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps would hit her small rural state especially hard. But she said she understands why Murkowski would support it and negotiate special treatment for her state. 'The fact is, Alaska is unique from every other state,' Collins said. Nearly one-third of Alaska's total population is covered by Medicaid, and the state has long struggled with high health care costs and limited health services in many communities. Most Alaska communities are not connected to the state's main road system, meaning that many residents, particularly those in small, remote villages, need to fly to a larger city for certain kinds of care. Food security is also a longstanding concern, as the remote nature of many communities means food often is barged or flown in, and options can be limited and expensive. 'I had to look on balance, because the people in my state are the ones that I put first,' Murkowski said immediately after the vote. 'We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination.' Some of her colleagues who voted against the bill were critical. 'They chose to add more pork and subsidies for Alaska to secure that vote,' said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the food stamp benefits, said that the food stamp provision would incentivize states with the worst oversight, which was the opposite of what Republicans originally intended. The provision would 'expand the graft,' Klobuchar said. Murkowski, often accompanied by Collins, has been under a microscope for almost every major vote in the Senate in recent years. In February 2021, she joined six other Republicans and all Democrats in voting to convict Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack of his supporters on the Capitol after the House impeached him for a second time. In 2018, she opposed the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh amid sexual misconduct claims, ultimately voting 'present.' So as Murkowski was wooed for days by Republican leaders and many of her colleagues to vote for the tax and spending cuts package, it was somewhat familiar territory — and an ideal environment for her to win some concessions in favor of her state. On Monday evening and early Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Senate Republican, spent hours on the Senate floor talking to Murkowski — who was sometimes wrapped in a blanket to stay warm in the frigid chamber. Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, would sometimes join the group, as did Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. As she mulled her vote, Murkowski sorted through drafts of amendments and talked to aides. And despite longstanding criticism of Trump, she communicated with White House officials who made the case that the measure would ultimately be a positive for her state and constituents. Thune had said for weeks that he would hold a vote as soon as he had 51 senators supporting the legislation. And after days of delays, it became clear Tuesday morning that Murkowski had decided to support it when Thune told senators to come to the floor and scheduled a vote within the hour.
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
He pioneered the cellphone. It changed how people around the world talk to each other - and don't
DEL MAR, Calif. (AP) — Dick Tracy got an atom-powered two-way wrist radio in 1946. Marty Cooper never forgot it. The Chicago boy became a star engineer who ran Motorola's research and development arm when the hometown telecommunications titan was locked in a 1970s corporate battle to invent the portable phone . Cooper rejected AT&T's wager on the car phone, betting that America wanted to feel like Dick Tracy, armed with 'a device that was an extension of you, that made you reachable everywhere.' Fifty-two years ago, Cooper declared victory in a call from a Manhattan sidewalk to the head of AT&T's rival program. His four-pound DynaTAC 8000X has evolved into a global population of billions of smartphones weighing mere ounces apiece. Some 4.6 billion people — nearly 60% of the world — have mobile internet, according to a global association of mobile network operators. The tiny computers that we carry by the billions are becoming massive, interlinked networks of processors that perform trillions of calculations per second – the computing power that artificial intelligence needs. The simple landlines once used to call friends or family have evolved into omnipresent glossy screens that never leave our sight and flood our brain with hours of data daily, deluging us with endless messages, emails, videos and a soundtrack that many play constantly to block the outside world. From his home in Del Mar, California, the inventor of the mobile phone, now 96, watches all of this. Of one thing Cooper is certain: The revolution has really just begun. The phone is about to become a thinking computer Now, the winner of the 2024 National Medal of Technology and Innovation — the United States' highest honor for technological achievement – is focused on the cellphone's imminent transition to a thinking mobile computer fueled by human calories to avoid dependence on batteries. Our new parts will run constant tests on our bodies and feed our doctors real-time results, Cooper predicts. 'That will let people anticipate diseases before they happen,' Cooper envisions. 'People are going to die from old age and accidents but they're not going to die from disease. That's a revolution in medicine.' Human behavior is already adapting to smartphones, some observers say, using them as tools that allow overwhelmed minds to focus on quality communication. The phone conversation has become the way to communicate the most intimate of social ties, says Claude Fischer, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley and author of 'America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940.' For almost everyone, the straight-up phone call has become an intrusion. Now everything needs to be preceded by a message. 'There seems to be a sense that the phone call is for heart-to-heart and not just for information exchange,' Fischer says. And this from a 20-year-old corroborates that: 'The only person I call on a day-to-day basis is my cousin,' says Ayesha Iqbal, a psychology student at Suffolk County Community College. 'I primarily text everyone else.' Child education student Katheryn Ruiz, 19, concurs, saying 'texting is used for just like nothing substantial, like nothing personal.' Sometimes the roles are reversed, though. Sixty-eight-year-old Diana Cunningham of Overbrook, Kansas, pop. 1005, uses a group text to stay in touch with her kids and grandkids. Her 18-year-old granddaughter Bryndal Hoover, a senior at nearby Lawrence High School, says she prefers voice calls over texting because then I can understand, 'Oh, how should I go about a conversation?'' When she was a girl, Karen Wilson's family shared a party line with other phone customers outside Buffalo, New York. Wilson, 79, shocked her granddaughter by telling her about the party line when the girl got a cellphone as a teenager. 'What did you do if you didn't wait?'' the girl asked. Responded her grandmother: '`You went down to their house and you yelled, 'Hey, Mary, can you come out?'' The brave new world has a price Many worry about the changes exerted by our newly interconnected, highly stimulated world. We increasingly buy online and get products delivered without the possibility of serendipity. There are fewer opportunities to greet a neighbor or store employee and find out something unexpected, to make a friend, to fall in love. People are working more efficiently as they drown. 'There's no barrier to the number of people who can be reaching out to you at the same time and it's just overwhelming,' says Kristen Burks, an associate circuit judge in Macon, Missouri. Most importantly, sociologists, psychologists and teachers say, near-constant phone-driven screen time is cutting into kids' ability to learn and socialize. A growing movement is pushing back against cellphones' intrusion into children's daily lives. 'At the turn of the millennium, technology companies based on the West Coast of the United States created a set of world-changing products,' New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in 'The Anxious Generation,' which has been on The New York Times bestseller list for a year. 'By creating a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids' eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale,' he writes. Seven states have signed — and twenty states have introduced — statewide bell-to-bell phone bans in schools. Additional states have moved to prohibit them during teaching time. That doesn't sit well with the smartphone's inventor, who says there are better solutions than regulation. 'Accommodating disruptive technologies requires disruptive solutions,' Cooper wrote from Del Mar. 'Wouldn't it be better for teachers to integrate the cellphone that provides access to all the information in the world?' Global inequality is an issue That advantage is coming to rich countries faster than poor ones. The first time that Nnaemeka Agbo had to leave his family in Nigeria for a prolonged period, life shuttled him to Russia for studies, like many other young Nigerians increasingly desperate to relocate to seek better opportunities. Adjusting to life in Russia when he moved there in 2023 was tough, he says, but one thing kept him going; WhatsApp calls with family. 'One thing that kept me sane was calling home every time, and it made me feel closer to my people,' the 31-year-old says. In a country that has one of the world's highest poverty and hunger levels despite being Africa's top oil producer, Agbo's experience mirrors many young people in Nigeria increasingly forced to choose between remaining at home with family or aiming at a better life elsewhere. At least 37% of African adults expressed their desire to live somewhere else in 2023, the highest rate in the world, according to a Gallup survey published in October last year. For many, phone calls blur the distance and offer comfort. 'No matter how busy my schedule is, I must call my people every weekend, even if that's the only call I have to make,' Agbo says. In Africa, where only 37% of the population had internet access in 2023, according to the International Telecommunication Union, regular mobile calls are the only option many have. In northern Nigeria's Zamfara state, Abdulmalik Saidu says the mobile connectivity rate is so low that 'sometimes we stay for weeks without network.' When 19-year-old Shamsu Deen-Cole flew from Sierra Leone to the United States to study international relations in 1971, making a call to his parents in Sierra Leone would take days, starting with telling his parents when to expect the call. Calls would cost around $150 for under 10 minutes. 'There was no time for extra talks or complimentary because it would all add up in cost,' recalls Deen-Cole, 73. Tabane Cissé, who moved from Senegal to Spain in 2023, makes phone calls about investing Spanish earnings at home. Otherwise, it's all texts, or voice notes, with one exception. His mother doesn't read or write, but when he calls 'it's as if I was standing next to her,' Cissé says. 'It brings back memories — such pleasure.' He couldn't do it without the cell phone. And half a world away, that suits Marty Cooper just fine. 'There are more cell phones in the world today than there are people,' Cooper says. 'Your life can be made infinitely more efficient just by virtue of being connected with everybody else in the world. But I have to tell you that this is only the beginning.' ___ Weissenstein contributed from New York and Asadu from Lagos, Nigeria. Aroun R. Deen in New York, Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, Renata Brito in Barcelona, Spain and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York also contributed.
San Francisco Chronicle
7 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
'Agonizing': How Alaska's pivotal Republican senator decided to vote for Donald Trump's bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just after midnight, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was pacing in a Senate hallway, alone and looking concerned. It had suddenly become clear to all her Republican colleagues that her vote would be their best chance of passing President Donald Trump's sweeping bill of tax and spending cuts. Had she decided whether she would support the bill? 'No,' Murkowski said, shaking her head and putting her hand up to signal that she didn't want to answer any questions. Around 12 hours later, after she had convinced Senate leaders to change the bill to benefit her state and voted for the legislation, ensuring its passage, Murkowski said the last day had been 'probably the most difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period that I have encountered.' 'And you all know," she told reporters after the vote at midday Tuesday, 'I've got a few battle scars underneath me.' This isn't Murkowski's first tough vote Murkowski has been in the Senate for nearly 23 years, and she has taken a lot of tough votes as a moderate Republican who often breaks with her party. So she knew what she was doing when she managed to leverage the pressure campaign against her into several new programs that benefit her very rural state, including special carveouts for Medicaid and food assistance. 'Lisa can withstand pressure,' said Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a fellow Republican moderate and longtime friend. Collins said she spoke to Murkowski on Monday when she was still undecided, and 'I know it was a difficult decision for her, and I also know how much thought she put into it.' Texas Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has also served with Murkowski for two decades, was more blunt: 'She knows how to use her leverage,' he said. The 887-page bill narrowly passed by the Senate on Tuesday — and now headed back to the House for possible passage — mentions California three times, Texas twice and New York not at all. But Alaska is in the bill 19 times, from new oil and gas lease sales in the state to tax breaks for Alaska fisheries and whalers to tribal exemptions for work requirements. Even with all the provisions for Alaska, Murkowski was deeply torn up until the hours just before the vote, when the entire Senate was focused on what she would do — and as Republicans were pressuring her to support the bill and move the party one step closer to giving Trump a win. She had always supported the bill's tax cuts and extensions, but she had serious concerns about the repercussions of cutting Medicaid in her state and around the country. She got much of what she wanted Murkowski eventually decided to support the legislation in the hours after the Senate parliamentarian approved language to allow several states with the worst error rates in the food stamp program — including Alaska — to put off having to pay a greater portion of the cost of federal benefits, and after Republicans added a $50 billion fund proposed by Collins to help rural hospitals that might otherwise be hurt by Medicaid cuts. Even with the fund included, Collins was one of three Republicans who voted no on the bill, arguing that the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps would hit her small rural state especially hard. But she said she understands why Murkowski would support it and negotiate special treatment for her state. 'The fact is, Alaska is unique from every other state,' Collins said. Nearly one-third of Alaska's total population is covered by Medicaid, and the state has long struggled with high health care costs and limited health services in many communities. Most Alaska communities are not connected to the state's main road system, meaning that many residents, particularly those in small, remote villages, need to fly to a larger city for certain kinds of care. Food security is also a longstanding concern, as the remote nature of many communities means food often is barged or flown in, and options can be limited and expensive. 'I had to look on balance, because the people in my state are the ones that I put first,' Murkowski said immediately after the vote. 'We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination.' Some of her colleagues who voted against the bill were critical. 'They chose to add more pork and subsidies for Alaska to secure that vote,' said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the food stamp benefits, said that the food stamp provision would incentivize states with the worst oversight, which was the opposite of what Republicans originally intended. The provision would 'expand the graft,' Klobuchar said. Lots of eyes have been on Murkowski Murkowski, often accompanied by Collins, has been under a microscope for almost every major vote in the Senate in recent years. In February 2021, she joined six other Republicans and all Democrats in voting to convict Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack of his supporters on the Capitol after the House impeached him for a second time. In 2018, she opposed the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh amid sexual misconduct claims, ultimately voting 'present.' So as Murkowski was wooed for days by Republican leaders and many of her colleagues to vote for the tax and spending cuts package, it was somewhat familiar territory — and an ideal environment for her to win some concessions in favor of her state. On Monday evening and early Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Senate Republican, spent hours on the Senate floor talking to Murkowski — who was sometimes wrapped in a blanket to stay warm in the frigid chamber. Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, would sometimes join the group, as did Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. As she mulled her vote, Murkowski sorted through drafts of amendments and talked to aides. And despite longstanding criticism of Trump, she communicated with White House officials who made the case that the measure would ultimately be a positive for her state and constituents. Thune had said for weeks that he would hold a vote as soon as he had 51 senators supporting the legislation. And after days of delays, it became clear Tuesday morning that Murkowski had decided to support it when Thune told senators to come to the floor and scheduled a vote within the hour.
