Jeep and Ram's range-extended EVs slip again, and Stellantis says nothing has slipped

Stellantis has moved the launch dates for its two extended-range electric vehicles again. Automotive News reported on 3 September that the Jeep Grand Wagoneer EREV, previously scheduled to enter production in May, has slipped to November, and that the Ram 1500 REV has gone from a mid-2026 target to roughly mid-April 2027.

The company does not accept the framing. “Both Jeep and Ram are on track as planned,” a Stellantis spokesperson told the trade paper, adding that Jeep arrives this year and Ram in 2027. Two supplier executives gave Automotive News a different explanation: the extra months exist to make the launches go smoothly.

Those two accounts are less contradictory than they look. A programme can be on track against a revised internal plan and nine months later than the schedule suppliers were originally tooling towards. Both things are routinely true at once in this industry.

The Grand Wagoneer EREV pairs a 92 kWh battery with a 3.6-litre Pentastar V6 that drives a 130 kW generator rather than the wheels. Combined output is 647 horsepower, 0–60 mph takes about five seconds, and Jeep quotes roughly 500 miles of combined range on a full charge and a full tank. The electrical architecture is 400 volts. The Ram 1500 REV uses the same basic concept in a pickup.

Production sites are set. The Ram is assigned to Sterling Heights Assembly in Michigan; the electrified Grand Wagoneer will be built at Warren Truck Assembly alongside the petrol version.

If the revised dates hold, these become the first full-size range-extended SUV and pickup sold through American dealerships — a launch Stellantis has now spent two years being on the verge of.

The Ram 1500 REV badge originally belonged to a battery-electric pickup. Stellantis cancelled that vehicle in 2025 and reassigned the nameplate to the range-extended truck, which had been developed in parallel under the Ramcharger name. That was a considered bet rather than a retreat: the argument for a series hybrid in a full-size pickup is that towing and cold weather punish a pure battery truck hardest, and a generator solves the resulting range anxiety without asking buyers to learn a new refuelling habit.

It is a bet the market has since validated for someone else. Scout Motors, which takes refundable reservations for a truck and an SUV it has not yet built, says roughly 85 per cent of them are for the Harvester range-extended version rather than the battery-only one — a split its own chief executive has said the company did not expect.

Which makes the slippage more awkward, not less. Stellantis had first-mover position in the American EREV market and is spending it.

A series-hybrid pickup is not a simpler engineering problem than a battery-electric one. It is a harder one. There are two energy systems to certify, two thermal loops to manage, an engine that must switch on and off without the cabin noticing, emissions calibration across a duty cycle no regulator's test schedule was designed around, and a control strategy that decides when to burn fuel versus when to spend electrons. Every one of those needs supplier hardware and software validated together.

Supplier executives saying the delay buys a smoother launch is, read plainly, an admission that the validation is not finished. Given Stellantis's recent record with launch quality, taking the extra months is defensible.

The cost is timing. The federal purchase credit that helped underwrite electrified pickups expired last September. Electric pickups have taken the worst of the slowdown that followed: Ford ended production of the battery-electric F-150 Lightning in December 2025 and announced that its next-generation replacement would use a range extender. An EREV pickup is arguably the right product for that market precisely because it does not require a buyer to commit to charging infrastructure. Arriving in April 2027 means arriving after a very large number of people have already bought something else.

November is the near-term test. If Grand Wagoneer EREV production genuinely starts at Warren Truck before the end of this year, Stellantis's version of events holds and the Ram date becomes credible. If November moves again, the pattern that began with the cancelled battery-electric Ram continues, and dealers will have spent three years selling a truck by description.

Buyers holding out for one should treat April 2027 as the earliest plausible date rather than a delivery promise, and should watch for the EPA figures. A 92 kWh pack in a vehicle this size, running an engine that never touches the wheels, will produce an efficiency number in charge-sustaining mode that tells you far more about whether the concept works than any range headline built on a full tank.