When a vehicle goes to an editorial team to live with and review for a while, the last thing any automaker wants is for things to go wrong, but that’s what happened with the Dodge Charger Daytona.
Electronics can be just as finicky as anything else in your life. Most modern vehicles go heavy on electronics, especially those powered by electricity. This dependence on systems to work right and features to function properly leaves some drivers confused when things don’t go as expected, especially since it’s become increasingly more difficult for most drivers to diagnose vehicle issues.
Some backstory
Like most automotive publications, Edmunds purchases a few vehicles each year and allows its staff to drive them for a while, allowing the writers time to get to know the vehicles better and report on what the ownership experience would be like. The Edmunds team bought a Dodge Charger Daytona EV as part of the One-Year Road Test fleet, which means one writer would drive it for a year and write about it periodically. The driver had the Charger, with the 670-horsepower setup, for about a week before something unpredictable and unusual occurred.
Something went wrong
As the writer was driving the car onto a street from a strip mall parking lot, things went a little crazy. The Dodge Charger Daytona’s dashboard lit up with warning lights for the stability control, front collision warning system, regenerative braking system, and a few other lights. There was also a message and a warning that the car would be in low power mode, which wasn’t the desired or expected mode.
Suddenly, the car began to accelerate sluggishly, which was a bit of a challenge. The driver got the Charger to the speed of traffic but then noticed something went wrong when their foot was lifted off the accelerator. When this happened, the car wasn’t using any regenerative braking to slow down and was accelerating a little bit, approximately one MPH per second, despite the driver not touching any pedals. In an EV, when the accelerator isn’t being pressed, the regenerative braking system should engage, and the car should decelerate, but in this case, it was accelerating.
Stopping was a challenge
The driver/Edmunds writer had their son with them when the Charger EV malfunctioned and asked them to take a video, which is posted at the end. While this issue was taking place, the car approached a stop sign, which meant the need to stop. The driver had to push on the brake pedal harder than usual to get the car to stop, but it actually stopped. It seems a little extra effort was required to counteract the acceleration, but it worked.
Instead of resetting and working correctly, when the driver took their foot off the accelerator, the car began to accelerate on its own again. Instead of having a slow, idle speed like most cars with an automatic transmission, the Dodge Charger Daytona EV continues to accelerate quickly. This time, the driver allowed the car to accelerate by itself as a test, and it reached 45 MPH before they had to apply the brakes for another stop sign. That was enough of the out-of-control car for this driver.
Resetting electronics, resetting a car
Because EVs are electronic heavy and dependent, the driver chose to deploy a time-honored and tested fix that seems to work well for most electronics. They pulled the car onto a side street and parked. Thankfully, when the car was put in park it actually stayed parked. This allowed the driver to turn the car off and wait about ten seconds before restarting it.
Upon restarting the car, everything was back to normal. The warning lights were off and the car drove normally, since that time, the driver/writer reports that everything has been fine and no further malfunctions have occurred. Still, this is an extremely scary experience and some drivers might hot have had the forethought to control the situation the same way this driver did.
Dodge’s Response
The driver, being an Edmunds writer, emailed their experience to Dodge and checked out discussion boards on Charger Daytona forums. They found that the experience was not unique to them or their one car.
Dodge said this is something that happens rarely but can happen, and a drive-by-brake safety feature allows the driver to control speed through the brake pedal. This means the extra safety feature worked as intended, but without any previous warning that this could happen, not every driver would be as fortunate as the Edmunds writer.