We Made A Dumb Mistake On That Dodge Charger Headline And We’re Sorry

The initial headline on our recent Dodge Charger post, “Dodge Will Pay Current Charger Drivers $8,500 To Try The Electric Daytona,” was misleading and inaccurate, and we’re here to tell you that, even though it was unintentional, we know it was unacceptable, and we’ll do whatever we can to prevent it in the future. So let’s talk about it.

Dear readers, one of you just pointed me to the Dodge Charger post from yesterday, and I’ll come right out and say it: Though I was not the writer or editor, I am the EIC of this site, so every failure falls on my shoulders. This post — a really simple story whose facts should have been easy to get right — was a failure, and I’m sorry.

The article mentioned that current lessees can get a new Dodge Charger Daytona EV with a $7500 Federal EV rebate plus $1,000 loyalty cash (“2024 Returning Lessee Private Offer”) — so $8,500 off in total. That’s good scratch. The problem was that our headline, mentioned in the first line of this article, implied that all of that money was coming from Dodge, which is not accurate.

In fact, the $7500 figure, the Federal EV rebate, applies to many other cars, so to imply that somehow Dodge Charger Daytona EV buyers would be getting $8,500 off would, in many readers’ eyes, imply that this figure was in addition to the EV rebate. It is not. It’s just $1,000 of loyalty cash to current lessees on top of the same rebate everybody else is getting. What’s more, the original headline didn’t make it clear that the $1,000 applied only to Dodge lessees.

Many of you called us out in the comments, and rightly so. We all have high expectations for this site’s editorial quality, so when sloppiness like this slips through, it’s a big deal, and one that we take very seriously. Thank you for keeping us on the ball; it shows you care, and it shows you know we can do better.

We have a typical two-pronged approach to blog publication — both the author and editor are responsible for making sure stories are accurate and that they strike the right tone. For both prongs to break down is a rarity, but one that we need to protect against. We have an ultra-talented team of smart and well-intentioned folks here at The Autopian, but we’re all fallible, and it’s clear that the more we can account for that fallibility in our article-production process, the better. Toyota does it in the Toyota Production System, so we can do it here.

Thank you all for your feedback, and if you have more in the future please email me directly at david@theautopian.com.