The 2023 Ram Promaster Van Gets Better Fuel Economy, Better Lights And a New 9-Speed Transmission

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Welcome back to 2022 work truck show in indianapolis i’m at the ram booth and i want to bring you wall-to-wall coverage from this show and this video is all about this the new 2023 fully redesigned ram promaster van and to help me do this is my friend dave sowers andre thanks for having me yeah dave thank you this is your new van for 2023 new style i mean it’s

Been the current generation has been around for what almost 10 years it’s been in the us uh since the 2014 model year so we’re right at eight years in replacing this for the 23 model year we focused on a couple of areas first we’ll start with the exterior yeah we get a new front end and from our perspective it’s a more serious look to the front of the vehicle

More business-like which that’s the user for this vehicle yeah one of the big functional upgrades here to the front in addition to the appearance is the headlamps so this is our premium lamp uh which is led our base incandescent lamp is 29 brighter than our lamp was last year this one is 50 percent brighter than where we were last year and it has better reach

Down the road much better usage for the driver and actually improves safety so one other thing we do with the headlamps is to significantly improve the durability so they’ll last much longer in a 24 7 business world that’s very important for our customers and the visibility is huge right absolutely so let’s take a step back because is the chassis mostly the same

Um as it has been most of the body structure is carryover except where we’ve made some changes for example we brought in the nine-speed transmission and so there’s some adaptation for that and the nine-speed transmission really brings a lot of performance improvement and it also brings efficiency with the engine upgrades the transmission and our electric power

Steering we’re getting over nine percent improvement in fuel economy again for business customers who look for total cost of ownership goes right to the bottom line with fuel prices today that’s going to make a big difference for the business consumer next let’s go inside do you want to jump on the passenger side and i’ll be over here and the power train that dave

Is talking about it’s a three net 3.6 liter pentastar engine uh v6 it’s i was just saying that it’s a v6 3.6 liter uh what 276 horsepower about that’s correct and it’s a front wheel drive chassis still that’s right front wheel drive gives us a couple of advantages we have a great turning radius oh let me jump in uh i’ve driven some of these and the turning

Radius is pretty pretty great the other thing that it does is it allows us to package all of the functional components in front of the cargo compartment makes for great upfits it gives us a low load floor in the back and good traction uh because the weight of the vehicle or the of the engine and transmission sits on the drive wheels all the time so we’re unique

In the industry with having front wheel drive and so uh it’s part of the what you get with a promaster uh for 2023 uh we talked about the powertrain upgrades many many electronic upgrades as well and uh so you see the steering wheel that you’re looking at now that’s a significant upgrade over uh where we were providing a lot of functional uh controls right at

Your fingertips without taking your hands off the wheel and that includes the new adaptive cruise control which is part of the active drive system and that active drive combined with lane centering and adaptive cruise control gives us level 2 automation in promaster so that’s the highest level of automation where you still keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on

The road and so that’s a huge investment in our safety the other big upgrade for 23 is in the uconnect system this brings the uconnect 5 platform which is five times faster allows for wireless connection to your bluetooth for carplay and android auto has five user profiles in it so in a commercial world where you might have two people driving the same vehicle uh

From day to day yep it allows uh the system will come standard with telematics module which allows for over-the-air updates and here we’re on the app screen over the air apps and that makes this system and platform flexible to evolve and grow into the future with updates to software and updates to functional apps so a very powerful uconnect system with better

Connection for both personal use people in the rv space or the van life space and certainly for the business user who are going to be very dependent on getting good data to optimize the use of their vehicle and i see you have some controls here you’ve now added park assist features that’s correct is this where it kind of takes over the steering wheel as well

That’s exactly right and uh that’s going to be new for 23 where we have perpendicular and parallel park assist available and that brings in a lot of sensors around a vehicle that’s this big uh to be able to do that but you can imagine trying to get a vehicle like this into tight spaces that couldn’t be beneficial for parking in a parking lot or on a street but

It’s also potentially beneficial in a loading dock type area as well so a new feature you you operate the uh the accelerator and the brake and it steers you into that uh location yeah very very cool and so we’re sitting in the one with what is this medium roof yeah we call it the high roof that’s the middle of the three yeah and then you have a super high roof

That we’ll take a look later but first i want to look in the back here because you have uh the crew crew van version here right and that’s a new change uh for 23 as well all right let me walk around because commercial vans don’t get changed very often this is a big deal as you can imagine but it’s also a big deal for van life because these vans are also very

Very popular now a brand new front end that also reminds me of the fiat ducato vans from europe and other markets so as you can tell there’s a lot going on here and dave this is i haven’t seen quite this orientation before can you explain that yeah what what this is is our mopar crew van package and it allows us to add an elevated second row seats here for three

Passengers and it also includes a solid partition so that allows you to keep the hvac heating and air conditioning in this area so you don’t have to heat the cargo compartment so it’s it’s much more effective at maintaining the temperature and it’s more efficient in terms of not having to run the air conditioning as much it allows for in this configuration five

Passenger when combined with the front bench seat up to six passengers and it maintains up to nine feet of cargo space behind it so in a world where you want to carry people and cargo or people and tools we’re able to do that in a unique way here this is the most finished second row of seating you’ll find in a large van space let me get in and i want to see the

Leg room because it looks like there’s a lot of it there will be so let’s see so you can see i’m just over 16 there’s a mile of space and also a mile of space above me so yeah this is quiet quiet roomy and you get above the cabin storage uh in the front and a lot of flexibility in terms of how you use it this package will come with standard polycarbonate windows

On both sides so it doesn’t feel like a cave inside but it provides a lot of flexibility to that van user and also some sound insulation right as you’re moving down the road that’s that’s always true when you put a partition and you’re going to separate some of the noise from the rear road noise and cargo noise from the passenger compartment all right let’s take

A look at the cargo area i mean this hasn’t changed because it kind of needs to have the same volume and the same type of usability right yeah that’s correct and the standard condition we have provides cargo lengths of 8 10 12 and 13 and a half feet this particular package is offered on the 10 12 and 13 and a half feet vans it takes roughly four feet away from

The front so on a 13 and a half foot cargo van that maintains nine and a half feet of full height we also have the area under the seat that is almost full length back to that original measurement of the cargo area for long building materials or other storage so it’s a very flexible area back here and it provides a significant amount of storage while still being

Able to carry all those passengers and you got you know is this an option just kind of a mat here this is uh one of the factory options for the vinyl floor in the back to protect the floor and protect your goods and obviously it can be outfitted you know for various uh occupations right yeah we think there’s a varied number of vocations that will use this it

Could range from lawn care to typical vocations like electricians and plumbing where you want to take a crew and your tools and it could go as far as catering type events where you’re going to have a crew to serve and you’re taking your food and your rental tables and things in the back and there’s also an application potentially for personal use so an active

Lifestyle you can get five to six people on the front you can take all your toys in the back and go out and enjoy because the payload and towing remain about the same as they were right that’s correct all you have to do is subtract the weight of the seat from the payload and we have 4 680 pounds of payload to start with um so you’re going to stay well above 4 000

Pounds in terms of what’s still available for you to haul in the back and towing is what about 6 900 pounds 6 900 pounds is correct yeah all right um so let’s check out that big van too because you have now the extra high roof right yeah or the super high internally we call it the h3 it’s called the super high roof oh wait can we do a drag race in this first well

Pretty sure the trx wins that all right but but you still have it here which is cool so this is uh your extra tall roof that’s right and this vehicle in this configuration is 13 and a half feet of cargo with our super high roof our low roof is uh five feet six inches our high roof that we just looked at is six feet four inches of cargo height in the back and this

One is seven feet two inches of cargo height here in the back and you can see that it’s quite quite tall how tall are you yeah i’m 510 okay and that’s almost arm length above me and what this results in with 13 and a half feet of cargo length is over 500 cubic feet of storage in this vehicle so it’s our biggest van and it’s going to provide the largest cargo

Height and the largest cargo volume in the large fan segment that’s available today i gotcha and once again uh for so when is this going to be available so the 23 model year launches in the third quarter and the the super high roof will follow immediately after that before the end of the year okay and one power train like we discussed so 3.6 liter and a nine

Speed that’s correct uh but you have something else coming next year is that right that’s right we’ve we’ve announced our intent to bring a battery electric promaster to market in 23. we’ve also announced that amazon will be our first customer so we will be working directly with them to offer very specific last mile delivery type features along with that bev

Platform for promaster one of the things that we introduced today that it will be part of that package is a roll-up rear door we don’t have it physically shown here but on this super high roof 13 and a half foot cargo van that will be an option for the rear and it really facilitates partial delivery so it’s a door where you can kind of lift from the bottom and

Just lift from the bottom it rolls up at the top and that allows them to keep it open they don’t have to swing doors into traffic and they don’t have to worry about proximity to other obstacles on the curbside for example a lamp post or anything like that well i think we covered did you announce pricing at all we haven’t talked pricing yet okay i’m assuming it’s

Going to be kind of competitive and comparable to what it’s been that’s right we’re always looking at in-market pricing there’s certainly been a lot of inflation in many of the markets but we’re watching that closely and our goal is to keep our vans affordable and available all right dave well thank you very much thanks andre i definitely learned a lot here at

The work truck show so stay tuned for more uh as i bring you wall-to-wall coverage about everything that’s new and it’s not just about vans it’s also about pickup trucks and big rigs as well so stay tuned for that coming up on tfl now in tfltruck.com okay hey guys welcome to tumbleweed ranch and in this new series we’re calling taming tumbleweed we’re going

To be a bunch of little kids with big boy toys and that of course includes things like skid steers big old trucks and much more because what we have to do is take this ranch and convert it into a functioning off-road test course along with everything that entails so that’s coming up very soon but let’s give you a little sneak peek of what we’ve been up to before

We start airing the series hey david hold up a sec so so what do you what are you doing back there i’m trying to get used to these controls my muscle memory is just completely off because i have two joysticks and it just operates a little different so it’s kind of a little bit stressful actually what do we do what are we doing here why are we dumping rock on rock

Well because this rock even though it’s better than just dirt it’s not real compacted and so when it gets wet it gets muddy it gets muddy yeah so this is going to compact this is recycled asphalt so it’s still got a little oil in it from when it was originally laid as a as a road so it’ll pack down hard and it’ll be a lot less muddy on your cars when you bring

Them into the garage and when we bring them out here to test it’ll be easier to keep them clean so this is kind of just phase one right we’re also going to be building a barn we’re going to be doing some major uh reconstruction up here at the ranch right yeah thank you for your help hey i’m glad to be here it’s fun to be working on equipment and especially being

Outside and do i get to play with this too oh yeah you wanna want to end again no no no so as part of tumbleweed uh um yeah that’s uh that’s the problem as far as tumbleweed ranch we’re of course going to build an off-road testing course so when we do our off-road testing we’ve got a perfect course to compare vehicles and we’re gonna do things like take nathan’s

Crack and make it into an obstacle we’re going to take sniper hill and make it into a climbing course and of course we’re going to take andre’s pit and make it a very difficult mud challenge this is all going to get well leveled so that we can take not spray paint but actual heavy equipment in here and build a barn which is going to be well you’ll see that’s part

Of the series you’ll see us actually erecting a barn because that is what david is all about he’s an expert at pole barn so we’re not going to eat an animal pen anymore because the only wild animals on tumbleweed ranch are going to be mustangs and broncos right maybe not mustangs but definitely broncos so coming soon come along join us on this journey as we tame tumbleweed choices

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The 2023 Ram Promaster Van Gets Better Fuel Economy, Better Lights And a New 9-Speed Transmission! By TFLnow