A battery-electric version of the Ram 1500 pickup will arrive in 2024, Stellantis announced during its EV Day press conference today.
The automaker released a teaser image of the future battery-electric Ram 1500 along with today’s announcement, which shows a sleek-looking silhouette with a low rake windshield, full-width front LED light bar and a short bed section.
Stellantis also confirmed it is working on a body-on-frame EV platform called the “STLA Frame” which will boast up to 500 miles of range. Power will come from the automaker’s new electric drive module (EDM) motor family, which combine the motor, gearbox and inverter into one single housing. There will be a total of three EDM motors, Stellantis says, which can be configured for front-drive, rear-drive, all-wheel drive and 4×4. It’s likely the electric Ram 1500 will come with rear-wheel-drive and optional 4×4 or standard 4×4.
Ram also announced today that it will offer fully electric powertrains in the “majority,” of its vehicles by 2025 and across all models by 2030. That means a battery-electric Ram 2500/3500 may eventually arrive, along with electric Ram Promaster utility vans.
“Our electrification journey is quite possibly the most important brick to lay as we start to reveal the future of Stellantis just six months after its birth, and now the entire company is in full execution mode to exceed every customer’s expectations and accelerate our role in redefining the way the world moves,” said Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares.
The electric Ram 1500 will be a direct rival for the upcoming Chevy Silverado EV. The Silverado EV will leverage GM’s latest Ultium battery technology and will have upwards of 400 miles of range. GM did not provide an estimate as to when the Chevy Silverado EV may launch, though it seems likely it will arrive between now and 2025.
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Comments
Looks like a sleek unibody truck… Cant wait to see the real thing, but wonder where Stellantis plans to buy batteries, they better work on that first…
It does look unibody. I assume that’s just because this is a design sketch though.
Wouldn’t that make it no longer a very serious full size truck? Hard to believe they would just walk away from that and go all Honda on everyone.
Hummer and Silverado Ev are also unibody (all BT1 vehicles are unibody), I think for a BEV, unibody makes more sense, as you can control bending and twisting moments better than on a typical body on frame, and bending moments are not good for the battery pack.
A typical body on frame pickup has a lot of bending and twisting through the center of the frame (the weakest section) , hence building the cab and bed as 2 pieces with a space between them, in a BEV you have the battery pack through the center, which does not like to be bent and twisted, unibody much stiffer, also lighter, and cheaper to build in mass scale.
But there are other reasons to have a normal bed on the back of a truck, like loading things, especially if you’re talking a work truck.
But, I guess they could relegate all that to an HD model.
I think for the power user, you are correct, stick with the HD for now, but for the casual user which makes up the majority of the 1500 segment, these unibody designs will offer a good solution, and are much stronger overall.
It will not be unibody. They confirmed it would be on their new STLA-Frame architecture which will be for body-on-frame trucks and SUVs.
There are some who want to argue this point but yes you are generally correct.
The Hummer and Chevy will use a body on the boxed platform that makes up the battery box. It will also include the motors. It will stand on its own sans the body.
It is stiff enough to let the bed and cab to be joined. This will make for a lighter body structure.
Fords first platform is a variation of a ladder frame but modified some. They are just now working on a platform like GM has. They started late but wanted to be first so the compromise.
C8-R WRONG.. The Hummer uses a front and rear subframe to carry the motor and suspension. The Hummer center structure is welded to the body and is not serviceable (unibody)
You are getting closer though, you previously argued Hummer is “Body on Frame”, and a modification of the T1 platform, both of which were 100% wrong…
See I told you some just want to argue.
Still not unibody as they want to claim. That is what the head of the Hummer Program has clearly stated.
They can E mail Al and tell him he is wrong. LOL!
What makes the Hummer EV not a unibody? If the structure and body are designed and built to act as 1 structure, that clearly meets the definition, regardless of what anyone says, thats just the facts.
The part where Al Oppenheiser stated in his interview that it was not a Uni Body.
If you like you can call it many things but it is not a traditional unibody platform.
The battery box is the main support this is where it will not twist and why it is stiff.
The suspension and motors are bolted to it like they are a ladder frame. Then the body is bolted to this platform
It may be a variation on a few things but it is not a Unibody.
At least in the eyes of the engineer overseeing the program. If you want to argue more e mail all. He answers his own e mail.
WRONG… The Body of the Hummer EV is fully integrated with the structure… There is no bolting together, It all leaves the body shop as 1 welded unit.. Al just posted a picture of the first production intent version on his facebook, and instagram 2 weeks ago leaving the body shop.
After paint, the battery pack is installed from the bottom, as well as the front and rear subframes which carry the motors and suspension.
I think the best way to describe the chassis is that the traditional frame rails have been replaced by the battery structure. Front and rear sub-frames (frame rails) are attached at each end of the battery structure. It also happens that the top of the battery can double as the cabin floor. Its been likened many times to a skateboard.
Further any body can be stacked on top of the skateboard. The idea that potentially any body can be set on top of the skateboard, my opinion is that the body of frame is a better description of it.
Arguing which of the two terminologies that were originally coined to describe vehicles over fifty years ago to best fit the BEV era… like watching the special olympics.
Wrong Andrew… In the Hummer EV the body is the main front to back structure, the crash structure around the battery braces the center of the vehicle.
What makes the Hummer a Unibody is that the body, and structure are integrated, just like GMC says in their marketing material. As for the subframes front and back, they do not connect directly to the box surrounding the battery, they attach separately to the sheet metal chassis. There is a post with all the pictures from every angle and explanations over on Hummerchat, feel free to go check it out.
Do you want to learn about subframes too, here is the definition… You should be paying me tuition to take you to school…
A subframe is a distinct structural frame component, to reinforce or complement a particular section of a vehicle’s structure. Typically attached to a unibody or a monocoque, the rigid subframe can handle great forces from engine and drive-train, and can transfer them evenly to a wide area of relatively thin sheet metal of a unitized body shell. Subframes are often found at the front or rear end of cars and are used to attach the suspension to the vehicle. A subframe may also contain the engine and transmission. It is normally of pressed or box steel construction, but may be tubular and/or other material.
So who gets the silver and who gets the gold? LOL
That’s a good 3 years behind their competitors.
So many complainers that GM takes forever to bring a model to market yet here Ram will be taking significantly longer to actually provide the real thing. Seems GM isn’t as bad as many suggest.
Oh, not to mention Mary leading the ship and having way more foresight than many of their competitors.
Fair comment… However let’s consider nobody has sold a BEV truck yet, so I like GM’s position, but not ready to declare a winner yet.
But at the same time GM didn’t bother with hybrid. Ram already has plenty of mild hybrids out there, and Ford is going all the way with full hybrid.
I know they can’t be all things to all people anymore, but I still think that’s a very large market.
A good part of me thinks that GM’s “all or nothing” approach to full EVs- if they are serious about it- will nip them in the ass much like GM’s all-front-wheel-drive mantra of the mid to late 1980s. Stellantis recognizes that not everyone is ready to jump with two feet in the full electric fray and that customers want options.
Just before comment section techno-econo-science gurus lace into another “dumb” automaker and educate us about how electricity never works. At this point virtually all the governments of the world, whether ally or adversarial to the US ,all major automakers from Germans to Japanese to Chinese to other Europeans, and all the financial institutions transitioning, investing electric vehicle technology.
So there’s two possibilities either all the automotive companies, sinister governments of the world, devious banks and wall street are dumb as sheet and knowingly committing bankruptcy OR habitual residences of GMA comments section….
Many companies that have and are doing Hybrids are mostly do to they want to spread the cost out on the way to EV products. Many just can’t afford to do what GM and VW are doing.
I’m pretty sure a lot of companies could talk about selling EVs and then not actually sell any.
Ford is the exception, because they sold more Mach-E than their own gasser Mustangs in June. That is an event no other company has done yet.
Soooo .. 2030? All these bragadocious claims about producing EV’s when last I saw, nobody wants them. What stellantis really needs is to create a 3rd gen 5.7 hemi with direct injection and their multi air system. The current engine is from 2009. Will this be for the European Market? Cause last I saw, the prior FCA customer wanted a hellcat motor in everything.