Dodge knows that its muscle car customers are just as much about vibes as they are about performance. Cruising around in old-school muscle car style with a rock-and-roll V8 soundtrack burbling is very much part of the Dodge Charger vibe. That’s why even though the new Dodge Charger Daytona is electric, it still needs to sound like it has a V8, and the famed American muscle car maker just revealed what its V8 fakery sounds like.
The system is called the Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust, named after Dodge’s Fratzog logo, and it’s said to feature many patent-pending technologies that give it its signature sound and feel. According to Dodge, it has “dual bespoke, high-efficiency extreme bandwidth transducers coupled with dual Fratzonic Chamber-loaded passive radiators, housed in a custom enclosure and powered by a dedicated amplifier.”
OK, sure.
Like other artificial electric car exhausts, the Fratzonic system adjusts based on throttle input, speed, and power output. So as you drive harder, it gets louder. It’s even tied to the different driving modes—Drag, Drift, Donut, and Track—so it should change in volume and style based on the car’s mode. However, unlike most fake EV exhaust sounds, this one is supposed to sound and feel real outside the car. And it seems to… almost.
In this new video, Dodge shows off what its Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust system sounds like. On one hand, it’s sort of like a real V8, but also sort of not. It’s like a single note with a deep, burbly V8 noise that gets louder but doesn’t really change in pitch the same way a real engine would. It also doesn’t sound like it’s revving any faster as it gets louder. It’s like Dodge recorded a V8 at 2,000 rpm and just played it on a loop, increasing the volume as the electric Charger’s “throttle” increases.
There’s a hint of fake supercharger whine, which is kind of fun because many recent Hemis were supercharged, but that doesn’t change the “V8” from sounding pretty flat. It also doesn’t ever audibly “shift gears” so it sounds like the Charger has a CVT and is just holding onto its revs. Just listen for yourself:
Dodge shows off the Charger Daytona Scat Pack doing some pretty impressive donuts—I guess that’s what 670 hp and 627 lb-ft of torque will do—but there’s something unsettling about the sound, like an automotive uncanny valley. Again, the V8 noise stays pretty low and never increases in pitch, despite its tires screaming and smoking in protest. Even when it drives through a tunnel, it mostly sounds like a real V8 but not quite. At idle, there’s a calm V8 rumble that seems accompanied by the synthetic hum all EVs are supposed to have for pedestrian safety, which feels strange.
It’s interesting that Dodge is trying to make the Charger Daytona sound and feel like it’s still a V8 muscle car, but part of me wonders if this is trying too hard.
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