A Dodge Charger idles on a dealer lot while the sales team scrolls through spreadsheets. You can almost feel the calculation shifting—strategies rewritten overnight, engineers rewired. I watched the earnings call and the math didn’t lie.
Stellantis closed 2025 with a net loss of $26.3 billion (€22.3 billion), driven by what the company calls “unusual charges” totaling $29.9 billion (€25.4 billion). Revenue slipped 2% to $180.8 billion (€153.5 billion). Those numbers don’t just sting—they rewrite the ledger on a bet the automaker placed years ago.
At a quarterly briefing, the CEO admitted the plan overshot demand.
Antonio Filosa, who took over in June 2025 from Carlos Tavares, said the company “over-estimated the pace of the energy shift” and is resetting around customers’ freedom to choose. I don’t use the word reset lightly here: you and I are looking at a course correction that spans factories, supply chains, and product roadmaps.
Filosa’s language is a direct acknowledgement that the strategy pushed under Tavares—to electrify across 14 brands—cost more than expected. The write-downs are the accounting truth of that mistake. If you follow Stellantis’ press releases and analyst calls, the narrative flips from aggressive electrification to pragmatism: hybrids return, diesels come back in Europe, and gas engines reappear in key U.S. models.
On lots and in showrooms, EV sales aren’t filling the gaps.
Dealers reported the all-electric Jeep Wagoneer S selling under 11,000 units against 210,000 Grand Cherokees. The numbers are blunt: only 7,400 electric Dodge Chargers found buyers, compared with 2,100 of the last gas Chargers built in 2023.
Why did Stellantis lose $26.3 billion?
There’s no single cause. Part of it is product-market mismatch: small European EVs that made sense in urban markets didn’t scale in North America. There’s also timing—engineering investments for large electric sedans and SUVs arrived as consumer demand shifted back toward gas-powered trucks and SUVs. Then the policy tailwinds faded: the U.S. EV tax credit expiration removed a price incentive many buyers relied on.
On top of that, Stellantis wrote off platforms, tooling, and R&D aimed squarely at a faster EV adoption curve. I’ve seen these filings before: when you bet the factory and the market moves, the balance sheet takes the hit.
At retooling lines, old engines are being reinstalled.
The Ram 1500 returned an optional V8 for 2026, and the Charger added a turbo six. Stellantis killed its two-year-old all-electric Ram and will replace it with a range-extender approach—an internal-combustion engine acting as a generator for electric motors.
Is Stellantis abandoning EVs?
No. They’re shifting tactics. You’ll still see electrified models across the portfolio, but the company is layering hybrids and range-extender systems where full battery-electric economics don’t match buyer behavior. That’s the same pivot Ford and General Motors have been forced into: Ford’s F-150 Lightning went back to a gas-assisted design, and GM has written down EV investments as well.
The practical effect is more choice for buyers—PHEVs reappear, diesels return in Europe after the EU rolled back parts of its 2035 mandate, and large SUVs may get generator-assisted electric drives. For many customers, that means the power and range they want without the extremes of cost and charging infrastructure pressures.
At the industry level, rivals are doing the same math.
Analysts watching Stellantis saw a pattern similar to Ford and GM: big write-downs, then strategic shifts. Reuters and The Drive have chronicled the product changes—the end of several Chrysler and Jeep plug-in hybrids, Alfa Romeo dropping the Tonale PHEV in favor of a gas model, and the Fiat 500e’s thin U.S. sales.
What does this mean for Jeep and Ram buyers?
Short term: more gas and hybrid options, fewer pure EVs in the U.S. Fiat and Alfa are being reshaped for regional demand, and Chrysler’s Pacifica hybrid has been cut from future lineups. If you’re cross-shopping pickup trucks or SUVs, expect conventional powertrains to be available longer than many planners expected.
Stellantis now forecasts a mid-single-digit percent rise in net revenue for 2026. That’s a modest recovery plan, not a triumphant rebound—but it’s baked into pricing, product mix, and cost reductions.
I’ve covered a lot of corporate course corrections. This one felt like a gambler who bet the house and then watched the table fold against him; the market, in turn, pulled back like a tide. You can read the filings, follow Filosa’s comments, and watch dealer inventories—then decide: is the industry correcting smartly, or simply admitting a costly mistake—what do you think?