Nothing confirms the automotive industry is “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” on the conversion to an all-electric fleet better than Stellantis’ announcement during the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise that it is ending production of two popular and profitable gas-powered muscle cars.

The automaker will stop making the Dodge Charger, and its companion model, the Dodge Challenger, by the end of the year, even though there’s still high demand for both vehicles and they are playing a key role in the company’s stellar financial performance. The company posted $8 billion in profit in the first half of the year, a 34% increase over last year.

The Charger was one of the the best selling sedans in North America last year. As evidenced by the number of Chargers, old and new, on Woodward this past weekend, consumers still love it. Second quarter sales of the vehicle this year in the U.S. rose 3% versus same quarter last year.

But Stellantis isn’t serving the marketplace with this decision. It is doing Washington’s bidding.

The automaker faces a $572 million fine for missing government fuel economy standards. To get in compliance, it has to kill the gas-guzzling power machines. Fortunately, there’s reason for encouragement in the company’s EV sales.

But there will be no hybrid transition vehicle. The Charger will return in 2024 as an electric vehicle, and that’s an eyebrow raiser.

Killing a money-making vehicle with no certainty that customers will warm to its EV replacement, or that a charging infrastructure will be in place to support a growing electric fleet, or that the materials will be available to make them, is a risk.

But it’s the reality of today’s auto industry. The Detroit 3 are pouring tens of billions of dollars into EV development, while its financial commitment to internal combustion vehicles withers.

Part of the reason the Charger was so popular was its accessibility. Stellantis could build enough of them to satisfy demand, and at an entry level price — $30,000 — that everyday consumers could afford.

Pricing for the new electric version hasn’t been announced, but it’s likely to be far more expensive than what Charger lovers have been used to paying.

That’s true even with the tax credits in the Democrats’ recently-passed climate and spending bill. Consumers won’t see the subsidies for years because stipulations in the bill make the majority of EVs currently on the market ineligible.

Perhaps the biggest statement made by the decision to part ways with the gasoline-powered Charger and Challenger is that consumers won’t have a choice but follow the industry down its EV path. No matter how much they want cars or trucks powered by internal combustion engines, the day is soon coming when they won’t be available.

The conversion will be about more than power trains. Many consumers are likely to be priced out of the vehicle market. They’re expensive, and getting more so.

Last week Ford Motor Co. said the price of its new electric truck, the F-150 Lightning, will increase 7% to 18% in 2023, citing higher materials costs and other factors.

The cheapest version of the truck will now start at $46,974 — or $7,000 higher than the price Ford originally touted.

General Motors Co. said in June that the price of its electric Hummer GM would increase immediately by $6,250, also citing higher prices for parts and technology, as well as supply chain problems.

Still, many car companies are investing heavily on the bet that EVs can be produced in the U.S. and for a U.S. audience, and within the next decade.

We hope they’re right. But success is not as certain as the giddy talk out of Detroit and Washington would suggest.

“As much as you want to talk about EVs, the marketplace isn’t mature enough,” Jack Hollis, executive vice president of sales at Toyota Motor North America, has said. “I don’t think the market is ready for what the rhetoric is saying.”

Supply issues will continue to linger, along with the continuing challenges of rising costs for raw materials like lithium, cobalt and other components for batteries. Those factors are incredibly difficult to manage, particularly with today’s global economy.

This forced transition has huge implications for Detroit’s automakers and autoworkers, which means it will be felt by all of Michigan. It’s already being felt. Ford’s more than $11 billion investment in two manufacturing campuses for electric vehicles in Tennessee and Kentucky will create 10,000 jobs in that region of the country, not Detroit. The automaker laid off 1% of its staff, mostly engineering, in the first quarter of the year, when it also reported a $3.1 billion net loss due to a loss in value of its EV start-up Rivian Automotive.

Increasingly the Motor City is becoming a quaint concept.

Automakers are leaving the reasonably safe shores of internal combustion vehicles, and without a lifeboat, to satisfy Washington’s demand that they fully engage in the war on global warming.

We hope the Charger and Challenger don’t ultimately serve as their gravestones.

— Detroit News