- Stellantis has released a video showing the construction of the 2025 Dodge Charger Daytona EV.
- The Windsor-built Daytona rolls down the same line as the Chrysler Pacifica minivan.
- Only Daytona EVs are currently produced; Hurricane I6-powered Charger builds start in 2025.
The Charger Daytona isn’t only Dodge’s first EV, it’s the first electric passenger car to be produced in Canada since Toyota’s RAV4 EV was axed a decade ago and a new video from Stellantis gives us a taste of how it’s put together at the automaker’s Windsor Assembly plant.
New cars have been rolling out of the Ontario factory for almost 100 years, but none of them has been anything like the Daytona. It’s built on the Stellantis STLA-Large platform, meaning it can accommodate either electric or ICE powertrains. Right now only the Daytona EV is being produced, but the plant is ready for the introduction of the Hurricane six-cylinder Charger next spring.
Related: Dodge Dealers Already Discounting New Charger Daytona EV Under MSRP
Stellantis has wisely opted to build both EV and ICE versions on the same line so that it can easily adapt to differences in demand for the two versions. Our bet is there’ll be a stack more Chargers coming down the line than Daytonas by the middle of next year.
But what’s rather amusing to see is that the Chargers also share a production line with the ancient Chrysler Pacifica minivan, despite it being built on a totally different platform and not sharing a drivetrain or pretty much anything.
The video doesn’t give us a full start-to-finish view of the production process, but we still see enough to know we’d rather be on the crews ironing out the imperfections in the unpainted bodies or bolting in the dashboards rather than being forced to wear full protective gear to assemble the batteries.
Canada’s Globe and Mail, which toured the plant, describing it as like an entire city, reports that staff working in the battery building were each given six days of special training before being allowed to slot the Hungary-built Samsung SDI modules into the battery unit, which is then attached to the shell using “a dozen or so enormous bolts.”
Although Dodge originally planned to ship the Daytona this summer, delays mean the first customers won’t get their cars until early 2025. The Windsor workers – as well as the Stellnatis board that gave the go-ahead to a CAD$1.9 billion ($1.3 bn US) project to make the plant EV-ready – are hoping that demand is strong enough for a third shift to be added. Stellantis dropped the site down to two shifts in 2020 due to slow Pacifica sales. But reports of discounts already available on the Daytona suggest all hopes of a third shift depend on the success of the combustion Charger.
