7,000-Mile Dodge Charger EV Lost $50,000 in Value After Just One Year

One of the main reasons many buyers are still reluctant to purchase an electric vehicle is depreciation, since battery-powered cars tend to lose value faster than gasoline cars.

While the industry average depreciation is 46% over five years, EVs can depreciate by approximately 59% during the same period, making the resale value a legitimate concern for buyers.

How to Lose $50K in One Year, the Dodge EV Way

Of course, some EVs depreciate more quickly than others, so it's always a good idea to have that in mind before committing to a purchase. For example, fans of the Dodge Charger Daytona EV should pay particular attention to this aspect, as Edmunds has learned at its own expense.

The car-shopping platform bought a 2024 Dodge Charger Daytona Scat Pack 2-door for $85,000 and ran it for 12 months as part of its One-Year Road Test fleet to provide its readers with first-hand observations of the electric muscle car's ownership experience.

After one year of living with the Charger Daytona EV, which Edmunds likened to "death by a thousand cuts," the time came to let it go. Here's where things got really painful, as the electric Charger, which had covered only 7,000 miles since new, sold for just $35,000, losing $50,000 of its value in only one year!

Even though Edmunds had to contend with a shocking depreciation of 59%, the staff was actually happy to see it go away. "The majority of the comments in this car's logbook have themes of disappointment, frustration or downright hate," the publication wrote in an article about the Charger Daytona EV's depreciation.

Dodge Charger EV Was a "Big, Expensive Disappointment"

The list of issues is very long, from buggy interior tech like an infotainment screen that's prone to freezing and a backup camera that occasionally stutters, to stuff like unintended acceleration-something Dodge says is actually a feature called "Drive by Brake"-and a dead 12-volt battery, the Charger Daytona EV was not easy to live with.

One reviewer also described the car as "boring," which is "the last thing a car like this should be," while another complained of many inconsistencies such as the radio scrolling stations on its own and the creep function randomly engaging while stopped-that sounds dangerous.

Finally, there were also complaints about the noisy climate control system, an annoying "clunk" produced by the motors every time the car moves away from a stop, and a "problematically awful" turning radius, among other things.

"The Charger was a big, expensive disappointment. We won't miss having this thing in our fleet," Edmunds concluded in its report. Yikes!

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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 11:14 AM.