Stellantis just posted a $26.3 billion net loss for 2025, and $29.9 billion of that came from what the company itself calls “unusual charges” tied almost entirely to one decision: pushing an aggressive electric vehicle transition faster than customers were actually ready to follow.
Whose Strategy This Was — And Who’s Now Unwinding It
The rollout was set in motion under former CEO Carlos Tavares, who led the merger of PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler that created Stellantis and then pushed a sweeping EV strategy across all 14 of the company’s brands, including dedicated electric platforms and major battery production investment. Current CEO Antonio Filosa, who took over in June 2025, is now the one explaining the reversal — describing a reset around actual customer demand across electric, hybrid, and combustion vehicles rather than the all-electric trajectory his predecessor charted.
The Sales Numbers That Exposed the Mismatch
The gap between plan and reality shows up starkly in the sales data. U.S. sales fell 3 percent in 2025, with growth concentrated almost entirely in gasoline-powered minivans, trucks, and SUVs. The electric Jeep Wagoneer S sold just under 11,000 units against roughly 210,000 gas-powered Grand Cherokees in the same period. The electric Dodge Charger managed 7,400 sales while 2,100 leftover gasoline Chargers built back in 2023 kept selling off dealer lots. The Fiat 500e, Stellantis’s small urban EV play, moved only about 1,100 units. Net revenues, meanwhile, dipped a comparatively modest 2 percent to $180.8 billion — the loss is almost entirely a story of write-downs, not collapsing sales.
The Hybrid Casualties Nobody Saw Coming
It wasn’t just full EVs that got cut. The Wrangler 4xe, Grand Cherokee 4xe, and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid — the only plug-in hybrid minivan sold in the U.S. — are all being dropped for 2026. The Alfa Romeo Tonale plug-in hybrid, hit by import tariffs from Italy, is being replaced with a gasoline-only version, and its related Dodge Hornet sibling is being eliminated entirely.
The V8s and Diesels Are Coming Back
In their place, combustion is making a very public comeback. The redesigned 2025 Ram 1500 launched without a V8, relying on a turbocharged six-cylinder — for 2026, the V8 returns. The Dodge Charger is adding a turbocharged six-cylinder gas option alongside its electric variant. Last September, Stellantis canceled its two-year-old all-electric Ram pickup program entirely, replacing it with a range-extended setup that uses a gas engine purely as a generator for electric motors — technology set to debut in the 2026 Jeep Grand Wagoneer before expanding to other large North American models. In Europe, small cars once sold EV-only are getting hybrid options, and diesel engines are returning to several models after the EU scaled back its 2035 EV mandate.
Stellantis Isn’t Alone, But Its Reversal Is Unusually Public
Ford and General Motors have both absorbed significant EV-related write-downs of their own — Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lightning was discontinued and is set to return in a similarly range-extended, gas-generator configuration. But few automakers of Stellantis’s size have walked back V8 and diesel offerings this publicly after committing so hard to an all-electric future just a few years earlier.
What Comes Next
Stellantis is forecasting a mid-single-digit percentage increase in net revenue for 2026, betting that a lineup spanning gasoline, hybrid, and electric powertrains will stabilize sales and margins after what leadership has framed as the cost of misjudging how fast the market would actually move. For brands like Jeep and Ram, where towing capacity, range, and performance drive purchase decisions, that recalibration means combustion engines are back at the center of the strategy, not a footnote to it.