Zac Quinn 
During the Stellantis Dare Forward 2030 live presentation earlier this month, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares took some time to talk about the Ram brand and Ram Revolution EV, which we know will be coming later than the competition. But that’s deliberate and will give them a strategic advantage as they can take the time to see what their competitors are doing within the electric truck market.
Ram 1500 EV: Stellantis CEO Building Up The Hype
“Are we going to open orders before we launch the product? Yes. And the brand CEO, Mike Koval, will decide that… it will happen significantly before the SOP (start of production).” Tavares stated. This should give customers plenty of time to build their Ram 1500 EV trucks before production. However, if their competitors are anything to go off of, they might have more orders than the number of trucks they can produce in a single year.
“When we talk about the competitive set which we compare ourselves, yes the Tesla Cybertruck is in that competitive segment, as much as the Rivian, as much as the Ford, as much as any BEV pickup truck competitor,” Tavares went on to say during the presentation. “When we talk about competitiveness, we are talking about a package of four major KPIs, including towing, payload, charging speed, and range. And talking about that package, what we are now building it’s highly competitive, and it has to because, as you know well, we are not the first ones to launch.”
“Our problem is that we’re not number 1 (to launch), our opportunity is that we know more than the other guys, and we have a better opportunity to beat them with the engineering that we are currently producing.” Tavares continued. That once again goes back to Stellantis being fashionably late to the party. While they won’t be the first to launch, it seems they are working on engineering what could be one of the best EV trucks on the market.
Tavares went on to talk about the STLA platform and the work that’s going into upgrading it to join the fight against their competition. “We have spent an enormous amount of time using the STLA Frame platform to upgrade what we were doing, and that has been, I think, a very rewarding experience… there have been very intense discussions, and it’s very exciting, very competitive, and we are ready for the fight.”
Additionally, we know that Ram won’t just have an all-electric truck planned to reach the market but other variants that will be able to suit the needs of different customers.
“Not only do we have a pure BEV version, but we have a few other things in our pockets that will surprise the market, but it’s still too soon to talk about it.” This is likely a reference towards the Ram 1500 REPB truck or “Range Electric Paradigm Breaker” truck. The REPB model will likely feature a gasoline generator that will turn on and recharge the pickup’s battery while on the move.
