October 21, 2025 - Alfa Romeo Delays As They Back Away From EVs

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for October 21, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.

Back in 2021, when the newly formed Stellantis held an EV day to promote its plans for broad electrification across its lineup, one of the brands that was highlighted was Alfa Romeo. Prior to the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA, FCA had been trying for nearly a decade to revitalize the Alfa Romeo brand and grow it beyond its core audience in Italy. The launch of the Giulia sedan and Stelvio crossover did grow brand sales volumes, but not nearly as much as had been hoped. During that 2021 event, the Alfa Romeo roadmap showed several new models and the addition of battery EVs as optional or standard on most models. 

The Giulia and Stelvio are still great cars to drive, but they are now a decade old and were due to get electric replacements by now. However, with the turmoil within Stellantis and flattening sales of EVs, especially in North America, Alfa Romeo has decided to delay the redesigns of these vehicles. Alfa's UK chief Jules Tilstone confirmed to Autocar that the current models will remain in production, including the high-performance Quadrifoglio models, until 2027. 

Stellantis has opted to take advantage of the fact that these models were being shifted to the STLA Large vehicle architecture to add hybrid powertrain options. All of the new Stellantis platforms are designed as multi-energy architectures to be able to accommodate internal combustion, hybrid, or fully electric options. In North America, Dodge has already used this capability to add a turbocharged six-cylinder engine to the latest Charger after a poor response to the EV variant. At this time, it's unclear if Alfa Romeo will even offer an EV variant of the Stelvio and Giulia. The top electric Giulia was expected to be offered with a 1,000-hp output that was likely the same configuration destined for the Banshee version of the Charger Daytona. However, that model has reportedly been cancelled.  For 2026, Alfa Romeo has also discontinued the plug-in hybrid variant of the compact Tonale crossover in North America, going forward only with a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder. It's a tough time to be making product planning decisions with a shifting market and regulations. 

Thanks for listening.