I’ve spent my adult life working in and around the automotive industry. After earning a mechanical engineering degree from GMI I spent the next 17 years working on electronic control systems that help cars stop, go and change direction before I drove away to write about what other engineers were creating.
Among the current crop of full-size pickup trucks, the Nissan Titan and Ram 1500 are the oldest designs having launched in 2016 and 2018 respectively. Nissan is addressing that problem by discontinuing the Titan in 2024. But Stellantis is sticking around and giving its big trucks a significant update that includes dropping all V8 engines and adding a new Ramcharger variant with a V6 and a battery that they really don’t want anyone to call a plug-in hybrid.
This aluminum block and head engine is designed to be extremely robust with cross-bolted steel main bearing caps and plasma coated cylinders that are tougher than steel liners. Ram officials won’t say what the Hurricane is actually capable of producing, but there have been hints that with more boost, it may be able to rival the soon to be discontinued Hellcat supercharged V8.
The Ramcharger is another kind of beast. Like the Rev, it’s built on the STLA Frame EV platform. The gas engined trucks and utility vehicles from Stellantis have frame rails that run essentially straight from front to rear. The STLA Frame version has rails that spread outward between the axles, allowing room for a larger battery like that used by GM.
By default, the Ramcharger runs on juice from the battery and as it approaches about 20% state of charge, the V6 generator combination comes on to maintain or build the level of the charge in the main battery. Between the battery and rear axle there is a 27-gallon gas tank. The combination is expected to deliver a range of about 690 miles.Like the plug-in hybrid 4XE system on Jeeps, the Ramhcharger offers multiple modes including Eco, e-Save and Electric+.
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