2024 Dodge Charger EV's Cool Power Shot, Drift, and Drag Racing Modes Explained
The 2024 Dodge Charger Daytona has a complex new lineup, but the updated user experience isn’t as complicated as you might expect.
The 2024 Dodge Charger Daytona has a lot to unpack, and it is shaking things up in more ways than one. First, we needed to wrap our heads around the idea of an electric muscle car. Never mind, there is also a Hurricane-powered gasser coming, called the Charger Sixpack, so we don't have to totally let go of that. It's a Charger, so it's a four-door sedan like the outgoing model, right? Wrong. Initially, the launch in the summer will be a two-door coupe with a four-door coming later. Well, it's a Daytona, so it has a rear wing, obviously. Wrong again. The new R-Wing is on the front, and with a much lower profile than the '69 Daytona. But only the electric Daytona gets the wing feature.
Confused yet? It all makes sense once you wrap your head around it, but the new user experience (UX) needs a lot less explaining. Once we go over the new features, the Charger Daytona is laser focused on getting the most performance out of it as quickly as possible.
Pre-Drive, Drive, and Post-Drive
Dodge has put some effort into curating the Daytona experience from every angle that you might interact with the electric muscle car. Before even getting in the vehicle, Dodge has three different solutions to enter it. A traditional key fob comes with the car, but an NFC card is included. Dodge recommends it for when you don't want to carry your phone or key fob, like at the track. Just have mom sew that bad boy into the sleeve of your favorite track day attire and you'll never be scrambling. The smartphone app gets some notable updates beyond just accessing the car. The battery charge level can be checked remotely, climate and charging schedules can be set remotely, and you can search for charging stations and then send them right to the Daytona, so the directions are ready to go when you get in.
Touch screens in cars are a contentious idea these days, but the Charger Daytona isn't replacing the windshield with Apple Vision Pro or implementing any other crazy ideas people might expect because it is electric. Dodge understands its customers better than that, and the driving experience isn't focused on scheduling stops to watch movies and play video games while you charge, but instead giving drivers what they need. In fact, the largest screen available is the 16-inch gauge cluster standard in the Daytona Scat Pack—upgrade the 10.25-inch screen in the R/T with the Plus Group equipment option.
A modest 12.3-inch touch display sits in the center, standard in all trims. Both screens have a 10x better contrast ratio with localized dimming, richer colors, and truer blacks than current generation Chargers. The driver's view gets even better with an optional eight-liter head-up display that's 50 percent larger than current Stellantis products and projects twice as far. Augmented reality features like the g-force meter are now easier to see, and there is more real estate for timers, lap splits, and wheel slip data. The Android powered Uconnect 5 has a customizable home page, Performance pages, Race pages, EV pages, support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, Sirius XM, Amazon Alexa, dual-zone climate control, and TomTom navigation with natural speech recognition, destination prediction, and a charging station locator.
Digital Experience Recorder
What about post-drive? You can review trip data, efficiency, blah, blah, blah—all that non-muscle car stuff as long as you please. But what is way more interesting is using the new DXR to record your track days for review afterwards. This is a big addition, and it sounds close to what's available in the 2025 Cadillac CT5-V and Blackwing. Building on the "pre-drive" experience, tracks can be mapped and saved, or existing tracks can be loaded, and the DXR can be run in Drag or Circuit mode.
A specific channel count wasn't given, but it is connected to "all the CAN messages" from the vehicle, records a front facing camera, high-speed GPS, in-cabin speech, and the acceleration data from the new sensors added to the dual-valve adaptive suspension available with the Track Pack. The DXR analyzes performance data, braking and exit trajectory, and can be viewed in the vehicle, through a mobile app, or exported through USB for viewing on an external device. The system will have a cloud-based component, but the specifics of it and the proposed community haven't been announced yet.
Performance for Every Occasion
Eight drive modes are available: Auto, Track, Wet/Snow, Sport, Custom, Drag, and the tire-smoking Drift and Donut modes. Changing modes not only alters the dynamics of the car, but changes the sound from the Fratzonic exhaust, viewable content, and lighting. Passengers can view gauges and data on the center screen, and the cluster will populate with instructions for the driver to navigate through the performance and tire-smoking modes.
The "attitude" ambient lighting uses 270 degrees of animated lights with 64 colors to create themes for open doors that can alert others with orange lights, ignition on or off, charging, and line-lock engagement in Drag mode. Dodge created what it calls a "one-touch button press experience," streamlining the drive mode choice with a single button on the lower left of the steering wheel. On the right side of the steering wheel is the Power Shot button—adding 40 hp for 15 seconds.
The entire new UX seems focused for the intended purpose of the Charger Daytona, but the fact that the two buttons—Drive Mode and Power Shot—that lead to the most performance are always within reach of a thumb means that even if you aren't into apps, NFC, or data analysis, you'll still be able to get what you need out of the first electric muscle car with two good old fashioned analogue buttons.
Read more about the 2024 Dodge Charger Hurricane I-6 and EV models on MotorTrend:
Cars should look cool and go fast. At least, that was Matthew’s general view of the world growing up in Metro Detroit in the early ’90s, and there was no exception. Raised in the household of a Ford engineer and car enthusiast, NASCAR races monopolized the television every Sunday and asking, “what car is this?” at every car show his dad took him too before he could read taught him that his favorite car was specifically, the 1971 Chevelle SS. (1970 can keep its double headlights, it’s a better look for the rear!) He learned the name of every part of a car by means of a seemingly endless supply of model car kits from his dad’s collection and could never figure out why his parents would drive a Ford Taurus Wagon and F-150 to work every day when a perfectly good 1967 Chevy Impala sat in the garage. Somewhere between professional hockey player, guitar player, journalist, mechanic, and automotive designer, he settled on the University of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH) with the hopes of joining a NASCAR pit crew after high school. While there, learning about electronics and the near-forgotten art of carburetor tuning (give him a call before you ditch your “over complicated” Rochester Qudarajet) were equally appealing, and the thrill of racing stock cars and modifieds weekly on the school’s dirt oval team was second to none at the time. And then sometime late in 2009, Matthew caught wind of the Tesla Roadster on YouTube and everything changed. Before it, electric cars we not cool, and they were not fast. A budding and borderline unhealthy obsession with technology would underpin a 12-year career at Roush Industries that would take him from a powertrain technician for the Roush Mustang, to building rollercoasters, NVH engineering, and finally to a state-of-the-art simulated durability lab working with nearly every EV startup you’ve ever heard of, and some you never will. And then it was time to go, and by a stroke of luck Nikola Tesla himself couldn’t have predicted, MotorTrend’s test team was looking for the exact kind of vehicle testing background he had to offer. And with it, his love of cars, art, engineering, and writing all suddenly had a home together. At this point in life, Matthew has developed a love and appreciation for all cars and methods of propulsion. He loves reviewing minivans as much as luxury cars and everything in-between, because the cars people need to haul their kids around are just as important as the ones we hang on our bedroom walls.
Read More
