The all-electric Dodge Charger Daytona R/T spent its first year online getting dragged by muscle-car purists who’d decided it was fake before anyone outside Dodge had driven one. The car it belongs to just won Detroit Free Press’s 2026 Car of the Year, and the numbers behind it explain why the reception has shifted so hard once people actually get behind the wheel.

Dodge’s own spec sheet is the place to start, since it’s the part of this story that hasn’t been up for debate. The Charger Daytona R/T makes 496 horsepower with the standard Direct Connection Stage 1 kit, runs a 400-volt dual-motor all-wheel-drive layout drawing from a 100.5 kWh battery pack, and is rated for a 317-plus mile range target, according to Stellantis’s own official reveal announcement. Zero-to-60 lands in the mid-4-second range. None of that reads like a car built to be a compliance-EV afterthought.

The detail that actually silenced a lot of the loudest criticism is the Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust, a system Dodge built specifically to answer the “EVs don’t sound like anything” complaint. It uses a pair of passive radiators to physically move air and generate what Dodge’s own materials describe as “Hellcat levels of sound intensity” — not a speaker playing a recording, but a mechanically produced exhaust note from a car with no exhaust pipe to speak of. Stack that with PowerShot, which adds a temporary 40-horsepower jolt on demand, and the R/T is engineered around the same instant-gratification theatrics that made gas-powered Hellcats a cultural phenomenon in the first place.

Key Points

• 496 hp, 100.5 kWh battery, targeted 317-plus mile range per Stellantis’s official specs
• Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust mechanically generates sound rather than playing a recording
• The Charger multi-energy lineup, including the Daytona R/T, won 2026 Detroit Free Press Car of the Year
• Dodge paused R/T production for the 2026 model year, citing U.S. tariff policy

That last point is where Dodge’s own honesty about the car’s rocky launch comes through. “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,” Dodge CEO Matt McAlear said in a company statement reported by Kelley Blue Book. The Scat Pack variant, with 670 horsepower and a 3.3-second 0-60 time, continues into 2026 unaffected, while 2025-model-year R/T units remain available at dealers with a starting price around $61,590.

None of that erases how divisive the R/T’s debut was among Dodge’s own base, a fanbase that has spent two decades treating the Hellcat’s supercharger whine as nearly sacred. But a Detroit Free Press Car of the Year award doesn’t go to a car that merely survived its launch controversy — it goes to one that convinced a panel of people paid to be skeptical that it drives like it deserves the Charger name on its trunk lid, electric motors and all.