Hemi Lovers Who Hate EVs, Lend Me Your Ears

Let me start by saying that this is not an attempt to talk Hemi lovers/people who hate electric vehicles into buying one or even liking them. The point of this piece is to explain how vehicles like the Dodge Hornet and upcoming Dodge Charger Daytona EV can play a key role in the return of the Hemi cars that we all know and love. This isn’t pro-EV propaganda – it is an explanation of a very real situation where even moderate sales success by the upcoming EV could lead to the return of our beloved Hemi cars in the relatively near future without leading to massive CAFE fines.

I will get to the short point first, then explain how it works in more detail below.

The Dodge Charger BEV is all-but-guaranteed to allow Stellantis to be well above the required average fuel economy number in the coming years (along with the other new BEVs in the corporate lineup), putting an end to the massive fines that have hit the company hard for the 2016-2020 model years. We don’t know the official MPGE number for the next generation Charger yet, but based on every other BEV on the market, it will likely be up around (or above) 100. That would put Stellantis well over the required number for passenger cars for the 2024 model year (and after), and whenever a company is over the required fuel economy number, the company earns credits for use in future or against prior years. Between the elevated average fleet number thanks to the introduction of the BEV to the lineup and the credits earned for likely exceeding the required number, Hemi-powered models – at least in low numbers – could be back sooner than later.

If you hate EVs and want to see the Hemi back in the lineup, you don’t need to go buy an EV. You need to root for your neighbor with the Prius in his driveway to trade it in on a Charger. You need to talk that coworker into buying a new Charger Daytona instead of a new Tesla. Hell, talk someone who you hate into buying a Charger EV because you hate them and you hate EVs – it doesn’t matter, so long as the company begins moving some units that bring the company’s average fuel economy number way up. We all know that there are plenty of people out there who are perfectly happy driving an EV – encourage them to buy the new Charger, so while you are enjoying your Hellcat car, they are effectively helping move towards the return of Hemi-powered vehicles in the future.

The bottom line here is that the best way to improve your chances of being able to buy a new Hemi-powered Dodge in the near future is to celebrate when other people buy the Charger or Hornet that you don’t want to buy. I am not saying that you need to like EVs – you only need to pretend to like them enough to have them help get the company back into CAFE compliance and to earn credits for future years. Those credits and the higher fleet fuel economy number are key to the return of the Hemi.

The CAFE Fine Issue

The key reason that we have seen the sudden shift from monstrous Hemi-powered vehicles to the 4-cylinder-powered Hornet and the upcoming electric Charger is CAFE – the Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements. So far, fines for model years up to 2020 have been handed down and so far, Stellantis has been fined a total of $582,600,000 for missing the required fleet fuel economy numbers. For the 2016-2020 model years, the company has averaging fines of $116,520,000 per year. The fine rates have gone up, so when the fines for the 2021, 2022 and 2023 model years are announced, they will likely be even higher than the past years’ fines, so by the time all of the fines have been issued for the 2015-2023 era, the company will likely be hit with nearly a billion dollars in fines just for missing the fleet fuel economy numbers.

For the 2024 model year, that required average fuel economy number for passenger cars is 54.5 and the number for light trucks (includes SUVs and half-ton trucks) is 37.5. The idea is for all of the vehicles sold within that given category to hit that number as an average, so it is weighted by sales volume. A low-volume vehicle like the Dodge Viper has almost no impact on the company’s CAFE numbers, whereas the bestselling vehicles have the biggest impact on the company’s average. Due to the massive sales of the Hemi-powered cars in the model years mentioned above, they led to an average far below the required numbers for those years (2016 was 37.8 for cars and it rose slowly each year, reaching 50.5 for 2023). There is a ton of math behind this whole situation, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that when the company sells a ton of Chargers and Challengers and none of them get anywhere near 37mpg, there is no chance of that company averaging better than 37mpg…leading to almost $600 million in fines thus far.

The current Dodge lineup is intended to put an end to those massive fines. The brand is selling far fewer models than past years, but they also aren’t accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for 2024. Also, if the company exceeds the required CAFE number, credits are earned that can be used in future or prior model years. Since the new Charger is slated to arrive for the 2024 model year with an MGPE number that is sure to be well about the 54.5 passenger car requirement, the company will not be fined for the 2024 model year in that category while the 2024 SUV lineup (Hornet and Durango) are likely to finish within CAFE compliance for the light-duty truck group as well.

Say that Stellantis as a whole, with more and more high-MPGE vehicles coming into the lineup in the next 24 months, spends 2024, 2025 and 2026 in the “credit” range of the CAFE requirements rather than the fine range. They could use those credits to reduce the fines for the 2021-2023 years, if not eliminate them altogether. Once those years and the pending fines are taken care of, the company could then begin introducing Hemi-powered models in low enough numbers that they wouldn’t pull the company back into the fine range, especially if the electric vehicles are selling in greater numbers.

Now, there is a chance that President Donald Trump will win this next election, get into office and make changes to the CAFE program, but for those changes to be significant enough to get Hemi cars back, they would have to be gigantic changes and that isn’t likely. During his last period in office, President Trump lowered the rate at which the required average numbers rise, but they were still rising – we need them to be rolled way back, not just rising  at a lower rate. Also, during his last campaign, the fine rates for missing CAFE requirements tripled, hitting Stellantis hardest. To get the Hellcat back right away, for example, Trump would need to roll the CAFE numbers back to pre-2015 numbers, and that doesn’t seem very likely.

However, if the new Dodge Charger can attract buyers in the EV community, those folks could help get the Hemi back into the lineup sooner than later. Dodge doesn’t expect to convert Hellcat buyers into EV buyers, but they are expecting to convert owners of other EVs to Dodge EV buyers and with success, comes the return of Hemi power.