Dodge, Jeep and Ram trucks are going to be available with the Hemi V8 again – but it isn’t going to be the same, again.
For one thing, it appears the Hemi will be force-paired with the “eTorque” system that was previously optional and which most Hemi buyers would probably pay extra to opt out of. The eTorque system is a variation of the so-called “mild-hybrid” systems you have probably noticed mysteriously proliferating. The modifier – mysterious – is used here because it’s a mystery when a feature few (if any) want proliferates. It’s akin to finding a side of cricket crackers placed in the bag with your Big Mac and fries – and being expected to pay extra for the cricket crackers you didn’t order and do not want.
These mild-hybrid system are compliance systems. They use (typically) a 48 volt electrical system (feeding from a high-voltage lithium-ion battery pack, like an EV’s but smaller) to power a high-torque starter that can re-start the engine almost instantaneously. This of course begs the question: Why is the engine off when you’re driving? It’s that compliance business. It’s not for the sake of gas mileage. The difference in gas mileage between a Dodge/Ram/Jeep vehicle equipped with just the 5.7 liter Hemi and the same vehicle equipped with an “eTorque” Hemi is almost literally nothing. A ’23 Ram 1500 equipped with the eTorque’d Hemi (last year the Hemi was offered) touts 18 city, 23 highway; the ’22 equipped with just the Hemi touts 17 city, 23 highway. That’s a 1 MPG difference – which amounts to no difference to the owner, at least in terms of “saving gas.”
The eTorque and other “mild hybrid” systems have proliferated in order to reduce the “emissions” – to use the gas-lighting term – of the gas (C02) that does not pollute. This can only be done be reducing how much gas is burned, which can be done by reducing the amount of time the engine isn’t running. That’s what these “mild hybrid” systems (and the cruder version, automatic stop-start) do. Roll up to a red light and the engine cuts off. When it’s time to move again, the system automatically restarts the engine. With ASS, this stopping and starting is abrupt and noticeable. It is less so with the “mild hybrid” system because instead of using the starter motor – which was designed to start the engine once, before you start driving – a belt/flywheel starter that has much more leverage and taps into much more power (48 volts rather than just 12) re-starts the engine almost instantaneously. You feel (and hear) these constant stop-start cycles less. The government is placated and the vehicle manufacturers hope you aren’t noticing all of that stop-starting and so aren’t complaining about it as much.
Of course, adding a “mild hybrid” system adds cost – because it must. As Robert Heinlein explained, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Especially when the government ordered it.
Circling back to the Return of the Hemi.
It is important to understand that the same compliance pressures that pushed Stellantis – the parent company of Chrysler, Dodge, Ram and Jeep – to pull the Hemi from the lineup have only been abated rather than rescinded. There is a misconception that Trump has rescinded federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations – which are sold to the public as “emissions” measures. This is not true. All the Orange Colossus has done is throttled back on the upticks in these measures that had been on deck.
Under Biden, CAFE regs that require every vehicle manufacturer’s fleet to achieve an average of so-many-miles-per-gallon were on schedule to increase to about 50 MPG – with that befehl (German for order, as in Fuhrerbefehl) slated to go into effect for the 2026 model year. Next year. This befehl would have effectively required every vehicle manufacturer to manufacture nothing other than small hybrid cars and electric cars – at least as mass-market vehicles – because these are the only kinds of vehicles that can average 50 MPG now that diesels have been forced off the market by the same federal regulatory apparat.
The italics are there to point out that it would not be technically against the law for a manufacturer to build and offer for sale a “noncompliant” vehicle. It would just be a very expensive vehicle, due to the cost of the fines passed along for “noncompliance.” The very affluent would still be able to afford what they want. Note that non-hybrid/non-EV Ferraris and Porsches that are not “compliant” are still available.
If you can afford them.
What Trump did will not make mass-market vehicles more affordable because he did not end CAFE regs or rescind the fines applied for “noncompliance.” He merely decreed that Biden’s decrees (and fines) will not apply, at least for now. The decrees (regs) in place in 2020 are to remain in place. Which brings us to the punchline of this not-funny joke.
It was precisely the decrees and associated fines for noncompliance that were in force in 2020 that led to the decision to retire the Hemi. Because it was getting too expensive to sell vehicles equipped with this engine. Dealership lots were filled with unsold $50k-plus Chargers and Challengers and Ram pick-ups and Jeeps, too. Stellantis was losing hundreds of millions paying Tesla for “carbon credits” to “offset” the “carbon footprint” made – so the Green Reds say – by the big V8s.
The pending (Biden) upticks were just the final nail in the coffin.
Now Stellantis says the Hemi is coming back. But since the regs have not gone away, the resurrected Hemi is going to be be even more expensive than it was. You will pay for the eTorque hybrid system and you will pay the costs of noncompliance.
The hoot n’ holler TeeVee ad showing a couple of working class Bubbas cheering the return of the Hemi in the Ram trucks is almost as pitiful as that old ’70s commercial featuring the Indian (played by an actor who was really Italian) paddling his canoe through garbage-strewn waters.
Those two bearded Bubbas in the Hemi-is-Back commercial are certainly the demographic that wants a Hemi-powered Ram or Dodge. Just the same as most of us guys want a girlfriend or wife that could make the cover of Maxim.
Trouble is, most of us Bubbas can’t afford either.
. . .
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I was a gen5 ram guy since 2020, owned 3 with hemi-only. I will not buy the hemi-etorque thing.
Guessing most of the returning Hemi’s will be in upper trim expensive models in order to not sell too many of them.
As soon as a Democrat is in the White House, CAFE will be back with a vengeance.
I agree, Rich –
This is a temporary abatement at best.
That “Indian” looks suspiciously khazarian.
I received my home insurance policy in the mail today. The rates have increased about 35 percent since 2020 or so.
One coverage was for green equipment, a total of 270 USD per annum.
So my lithium battery drill costs me about 60 dollars to insure, the battery chainsaw about 60 dollars to insure, the weed Wacker battery power tool is charged 60 dollars to insure, the battery powered little garden tiller costs 60 dollars per year to insure.
All are used maybe 10 hours in a year, I pay 27 dollars per hour to insure battery-powered devices that are used very little.
You are being bilked, every every every da-a-a-a-ay.
I’ll be contacting my agent, who must be insane.
There is no rest for the stupid.
Morning, Drump –
I’m expecting to have to cancel my classic car and motorcycle insurance. I’m not going to pay these bastards twice or more for “coverage.” I get nothing of value to me from “coverage” – so I’m done paying for it. Tally ho. The game is rigged. So I’m not playing by their rules anymore.
Insurance is going to bankrupt many of us – if we keep paying for it.
My legal “stick it to the man” the 1991 Silverado now has a WA “collector plate” so no more yearly ear tags on that one. Plus they bag the front plate rule, so I got a shiny “Silverado” with bow tie for the front, Sparkey be stylin’.
Of course the dire warnings when you apply for that plate “may only be used for participation in club activities, exhibitions, tours, parades, and occasional pleasure driving”. Yea so basically a free for all since it’s always a pleasure to drive that comfortable smooth running old truck.
PS: I’d like to see liability insurance divorced from “per vehicle”. You can only drive one at a time, why pay on three all the time? Ridiculous.
Wait, WA stopped forcing the front plates? How did I miss this?
Agree on both fronts – I have been utilizing any car I can as a parade-only vehicle since I figured it out like 15 years ago. I am also just about done paying the insurance mafia for anything other than a daily driver.
I truly think that will be the only path forward for most people – just stop paying. There are tons of uninsured motorists at any given time, only it seems the vast majority are not in the country legally. All the suckers.. er, fine folks that pay for everything are being bilked more and more. But for how long? I think it’s the way average people can push back, just stop funding all the scams.
Hi Vandall,
The antique vehicle policy I have for my old Trans-Am just went up $50 – which doesn’t sound like much until I mention that it used to cost $150. Now it’s $200. That’s a big increase. Why? I have not filed a claim, ever. I have zero tickets and five “plus” points. There is not a single factor relating to me that can justify this increase. I hardly drive the car. When I do, it’s a 10 mile “loop” from my place and back on lightly traveled back roads. I am done paying as far as any more. If they try another increase next year, I’m cancelling. Same goes for the bikes and maybe even the truck. It is at the point that I cannot afford to just throw way $600 per year (the total cost right now) for nothing of any value to me. That $600 is better spent on me. They can all go to Hell. Let ’em do their worst. I am at the No Longer Care point.
Ford’s “Model T Moment” – Part IV
Poor Jim Farley thinks his biggest competition is … *drum roll* … Chinese EeeVees! No, really:
“We are in a global competition with China,” Farley said earlier this year. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”
‘At a Ford factory in Louisville, Farley announced a series of drastic countermeasures to begin making cheaper electric cars that can compete with Xiaomi and other Chinese companies.
‘Ford’s answer to China starts with—what else?—a pickup truck. In 2027, the Louisville plant will produce a new electric truck starting at $30,000. Plenty of Americans might get excited about a decent, affordable electric truck.
‘A small team full of former Tesla and Apple engineers, working out of [where else?] California, designed the process. The new truck will be made with 20 percent fewer parts than a traditional gas vehicle, Ford has said, and half as many cooling hoses.
‘Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act just gutted many EV subsidies and incentives that would have helped America catch up [sic] to China. As Chinese EVs take over the world [sic], keeping them out of the U.S. becomes a tougher and tougher sell.’ — The Atlantic
https://archive.ph/Xuvpn#selection-803.36-803.136
WTF? This sounds like an alternate universe. Then we find out the affiliation of the ink-stained wretch who scribbled this delusional screed: ‘Patrick George is the editor-in-chief of InsideEVs, where he covers the future of transportation. He is based in [where else?] New York.
‘The future of transportation’ — megalomaniacize much? This electron-addled clown is certified FaG — Fake and Gay. Now go stick your finger in a plug, ‘Patrick.’
I think the return of the Hemi for the Charger, Durango, and Ram was at the behest of law enforcement agencies who didn’t like the Ford Explorer or the Chevy Tahoe.
Lots of PDs like the Charger and Durango.
Were it not for that, the Hemi would have truly been gone.
This obsession that the overlords have (and many people as well) with fuel efficiency is completely retarded (But of course, we KNOW why the government has that obsession, and it has nothing to do with saving us money!).
I bought a new zero-turn mower last fall. Made sure to get a simple carbureted low-tech one…which greatly narrowed down the choices, as so many lawn mowers now even have electronics and EFI and emissions bullshit (Yeah, I don’t need nor want a catalytic converter and oxygen sensors and an ECM on my freaking lawnmower!).
A nice surprise was that the new mower- same size as my old mower- uses less than half the fuel of my old mower. 0.8 GPH vs. close to 2.0 GPH. I thought “Oh goody! This’ll save me some money, as I mow quite a few acres almost every week nearly 6 months out of the year. Did the math and figured it out. Turns out, it’ll save me about $200 a year in gas. I needed a new mower, but if I had gotten it for the sake of saving money, I would be sorely disappointed, as even if it lasts me 20 years (which it may well- my “back-up” mower is 17 years old and still going strong) I’d never recoup the $7500 purchase price in gas savings.
It’s that same deal with cars. Only at least with the mower, I can reasonably expect quite a few years of trouble-free operation, and a long life with cheap and minimal repairs, whereas with the current cars, such is not the case! The new car purchased today will be scrap or an expensive money pit likely before my new mower even needs it’s first repair (And which will be cheap and easy to perform when it does). NOTHING about new cars is inexpensive or easy, and they are not durable. Most of the 2025 cars will be bricked dinosaurs by 2032 or so.
It’s been my observation that globalization has created more people with a LOT more money… but also a LOT more people with nothing but a bucket of piss.
You will ALWAYS be able to have a V-8 if you want it — IF you can afford it. Same thing with guns, airplanes, boats, land, legal help, taxes, etc. etc. No matter how many rules and regulations there are, there is always an exception for the very rich. The billionaire Jewish oligarch Bloomberg spent $100 million to defeat the NRA and ban “assault weapons” and hi-cap mags in New York… but there is an exception in the law for retired cops, you see. So he hired all retired NYPD cops to guard him 24-7-365 with the very “assault weapons” and magazines he banned for you peasants.
The elites who decry global warming will always be chauffeured to their private jets in V-8 limousines while you peasants are forced to take out a 7-year loan at usurious interest rates on a $30,000 1.3 liter three-cylinder shitbox SUV. Failing that, you can ride government buses and subways with muggers, rapists, and homeless schizophrenics urinating on the floor.
Ford’s website has basically factory-built Mustang race cars for off-road use only. They don’t list the price. As the saying goes, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. It’s very clear that the auto industry has abandoned Uncle Henry’s business model of selling high volume at a low price, and replaced it with selling fewer boutique units to indulge the fetishes of the rich. Just look at the demand for $100,000 Broncos and Raptors.
I am not a communist or a socialist, but we do not live in a truly classical liberal economy where average people can have a decent life and can afford the conveniences of modern life. we live in a globalist oligarchy where the rich can have anything they want and the rest of us can piss off.
Ah yes Lil’ Timmy . . . CEO of Ram . . . Yet another in a line of CEO’s that knows nothing about design, engineering, or manufacturing . . . And he’s gonna’ save Ram?
Just another useless sales and marketing guy selling out the industry for his own aggrandizement.
FAFO.
‘Most of us guys want a girlfriend or wife that could make the cover of Maxim. Trouble is, most of us Bubbas can’t afford either.’ — eric
Oy vey, Eric — this explosive subject deserves a book-length treatment. Thinking someone might have written it already, I searched ‘high maintenance women in literature.’ But stupid Google retrieved only recent, shallow commercial crap, and idiot AI doesn’t do literature. Naturally, I turned to the inimitable Charles Bukowski [Post Office]:
I always picked up my six-pack on the way [home], and one morning I was really done. I climbed the stairway (there was no elevator) and put the key in. The door swung open. Somebody had changed all the furniture around, put in a new rug. No, the furniture was new too.
There was a woman on the couch. She looked all right. Young. Good legs. Blonde.
“Hello,” I said, “care for a beer?”
“Hi!” she said. “All right, I’ll have one.”
“I like the way this place is fixed up,” I told her.
“I did it myself.”
“But why?”
“I just felt like it,” she said.
We each drank at the beer.
“You’re all right,” I said. I put my beercan down and gave her a kiss. I put my hand on one of her knees. It was a nice knee.
Then I had another swallow of beer.
“Yes,” I said, “I really like the way this place looks. It’s really going to lift my spirits.”
“That’s nice. My husband likes it too.”
“Now why would your husband . . . What? Your husband? Look, what’s this apartment number?”
“309.”
“309? Great Christ! I’m on the wrong floor! I live in 409. My key opened your door.”
“Sit down, sweetie,” she said.
“No, no . . .”
I picked up the four remaining beers.
“Why rush right off?” she asked.
“Some men are crazy,” I said, moving toward the door.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, some men are in love with their wives.”
She laughed. “Don’t forget where I’m at.”
‘As Robert Heinlein explained, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ — eric
More precisely, TANSTAAFL: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Tell ’em Bubba sent ya.
As hyperbolic as it may be (and all ads are), I’d much rather see that RAM commercial and get a hemi back in whatever form it may be than to watch than the dystopian Jaguar commercial with an EV only.
Champagne and caviar you say?
Defend the Homeland’: DHS unveils striking new ICE fleet to boost recruitment, visibility. Dark navy SUVs display gold ‘President Donald J. Trump’ lettering, and the agency reported 100,000 job applications
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/defend-homeland-dhs-unveils-striking-new-ice-fleet-boost-recruitment-visibility
Do check out the embedded tweet or whatever from DHS titled “Iced Out.” Full rap video Idiocracy.
Sorry, that engine isn’t for civilians. It’s for the LEOs that patrol our highways, so they can continue to run flat-out to the crime scene. At least now they can sit in the median for hours without idling the engine to keep their coffee maker running.
Why do the auto manufacturers offer vehicles that nobody really wants to buy? In the past 75 years, a perfect engine has to be here by now. What gives? All you get is confusion and chaos.
Leave it to a Dago to go half way around the world to pick up trash.
Besides, Grey Owl did it first.
I wonder how well these Champagne trucks will sell as the people who normally would buy can’t and those who could afford to buy them won’t because it’s a pickup? Probably not very well is my guess.
Once again congratulations to the manufacture for not understanding their buyers.
And those two Bubbas are about as close as any in the C-Suites will get to actually knowing the people that want and need a true V8 work truck. They are part of The Big Club that you ain’t in. They all went to the right schools, read the same business texts and couldn’t figure out how to jerry-rig something if their life depended on it. And some day, it just might…