No, the 2025 Ramcharger Doesn’t Have “Unlimited Battery Electric Range”
Stellantis Tries Toyota's Playbook for Its Newest Electrified Truck
Steve Birkett is an electric vehicle advocate based in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. He is a content creator and marketing professional who contributes written and recorded pieces to a wide range of media outlets. His analysis has been featured in Find The Best Car Price, WWLP TV, and Torque News, among others. He has also had video content featured on Inside EVs. Birkett was an EV Guide for Plug in America events in Massachusetts (Drive Electric Cambridge and Drive Electric Lowell) and Ohio (Earth Day 2019 at Cleveland Zoo). He participates in quarterly advisory panel meetings for EVolve New York (a state-level charging initiative) and has contributed to focus groups for prominent U.S. charging networks.
Birkett is a father-of-two who loves nothing more than packing up the family and hitting the road in their latest electric car, which is currently a 2022 Hyundai IONIQ 5. With multiple Chevy Bolts in his past, as well as a Chevy Volt and Tesla Model 3 LR in the extended family, plus various EV rentals when he ventures back home to his native United Kingdom, Birkett has more than 100,000 all-electric miles under his belt and is always ready to try out a new electric vehicle.
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While the promise of the 2025 Ramcharger makes a lot of sense in the context of electrified trucks trying to deliver acceptable range, its promotional language is intentionally misleading. Like Toyota's "self-charging hybrid" before it, Stellantis' claim of "unlimited battery electric range" stretches the truth to breaking point and will only confuse truck buyers.
- Steve Birkett, Senior EV Editor
November 7th, 2023 – Stellantis has announced the 2025 Ramcharger, an electrified truck that could deliver much and purports to do the impossible: provide unlimited driving range.
On the face of it, the 2025 Ram 1500 Ramcharger is the answer to every problem that currently afflicts fully electric trucks. Poor towing range? The 1500 Ramcharger will haul up to 14,000 lbs and boasts a maximum payload capacity of 2,625 lbs, with a 3.6-liter V6 onboard to generate up to 130kW and recharge its battery pack.
Enormous battery pack weighing it down? The Ramcharger system requires only a 92 kWh battery pack to achieve superior range and towing than all-electric competitors, which is 30% smaller than a Ford F150 Lightning's pack and half what estimates say the Chevy Silverado EV will be carrying around.
Even while coming with the ability to directly fast charge its battery pack at 145kW, which isn't far off the aforementioned models, the Ramcharger adds the convenience of a quicker gasoline top-up on long journeys, after which the onboard generator can go to work while the truck gets back on the road.
It's that small detail that presents a problem for Stellanis marketing the powerful new platform. "Unlimited battery electric range" comes at the cost of filling up a 27-gallon tank when the battery gets low, which is neither affordable nor unlimited. Like Toyota's "self-charging hybrid" technology before it, which fell foul of advertising standards in Norway and has been widely criticized across Europe, Stellantis is stretching the truth to breaking point with its headline claim for the 2025 Ramcharger. The limits on the Ramcharger's range are as far as the battery charge will take it, plus whatever gasoline left in the tank can be burnt to keep it topped up.
Away from this questionable claim, the 2025 Ramcharger promises to be a potentially compelling bridge technology for a North American truck market that still views all-electric pickups with a skeptical eye. Creating a range-extended electrified truck could prove to be the missing link for a consumer segment that has thus far failed to be convinced by vehicles like the Ford F150 Lightning, or consistently delayed all-electric trucks like the Chevy Silverado EV and Tesla Cybertruck.
