They roar badly: Dodge recalls all electric Charger Daytona due to incorrect imitation of an internal combustion engine rumble

Electric vehicles are rapidly changing the way we think about driving — no gasoline, no emissions, and usually no engine noise. But not everyone is ready to say goodbye to the spine-tingling roar. That’s why Dodge has decided to add an artificial engine sound to its electric Charger Daytona. And now there’s a curiosity: their oil tanker is called in for modification because of… the wrong artificial sound.

Stellantis, the company that owns the Dodge brand, is recalling more than 8 thousand Charger Daytona electric vehicles manufactured in 2024-2025. The reason is a malfunction of the external sound amplifier. It was supposed to reproduce not only the signature «roar» of a powerful internal combustion engine, but also the horns required for pedestrians at low speed. Without these signals, cars do not comply with the American safety standard FMVSS No. 141.

The problem was discovered on April 17, 2025, when technical safety specialists at FCA US (formerly known as Chrysler Group LLC, now a division of Stellantis) began an investigation into the suspected lack of external sound in some cars. By mid-May, engineers confirmed that the problem did exist, and that some cars did not have the required module installed or activated. It turned out that the defect covers cars manufactured from April 30, 2024 (when the first Dodge Charger Daytona 2024 was released) to March 18, 2025 (when the last electric Charger was released). Thus, we are talking about recalling the entire series, which is about 8390 electric vehicles.

Now Dodge plans to update the software to add the necessary sound signals. Without them, the car is not allowed to move through the street without a special noise generating device at speeds up to 30 km/h — pedestrians may simply not hear it coming.

But there is another curiosity associated with this story. The so-called Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust is a proprietary system that simulates the roar of a HEMI V8 engine, combining digital sound synthesis with a speaker in the car body. But the problem is that the company «a little» got carried away with creating an artificial roar of an internal combustion engine. As a result, the imitator reproduces sound with noise at 126 dB. To give you an idea, according to Yale University, that’s enough to cause most people physical pain — it’s like a plane taking off or a loud concert with a speaker in your face. Even the engines of modern cars «Formula 1» are a bit «more modest» and produce 115-120 dB.

This roar was intended to compensate for the lack of the characteristic «growl» of a gasoline engine and to please fans of classic muscle cars. But the question arises: is it really necessary to create such a loud imitation?

Nevertheless, for all its engineering complexity and design, the electric Charger Daytona does not cause queues in dealerships. It’s as if it has a split personality: an electric car that wants to look like the good old 6.2-liter Hellcat HEMI V8 engine.

Source: electrek