Ram Professional held a brand review and update on July 30 at the North American headquarters of parent company Stellantis in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

The meeting, for trade journalists and influencer media, reinforced previously announced initiatives but had a few surprises woven in. It also served as an opportunity to take the Ram ProMaster EV out for a local drive. (We’ll wait on the ProMaster EV deep dive, as drive impressions are embargoed until Aug. 6.)

The update was conducted by newly appointed Ram and Chrysler brand CEO Chris Feuell, who was joined by Ken Kayser, vice president of Ram Professional, and Dave Sowers, director of commercial vehicle product marketing.

Feuell kicked off the presentation by underscoring the importance of the Ram brand to Stellantis, citing the statistic that 80% of Stellantis’ commercial sales in North America are from Ram. The brand consists of the commercial ProMaster van and its many variations and a pickup lineup of ½-, ¾, and 1-ton versions, along with a chassis cab.  

(For anyone needing a refresher, Stellantis launched in 2021 when Fiat Chrysler Automobiles merged with Groupe PSA, owners of the Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Opel, and Vauxhall brands.)

Ram Sales & Market Share

Feuell said the company’s commercial business has grown over 40% since 2018, which translated into a seven-point increase in market share through 2023.     

Ram’s sales dipped in the first half of 2024, which Feuell attributed to a slower-than-expected ramp-up and launch of the 2025 Ram 1500, the sunset of the ProMaster City compact van, and the takedown of the ProMaster plant to prepare for the EV model as well as expand production capacity for the internal combustion engine (ICE) models.

As a follow-up to the launch of the new Ram Professional commercial vehicle division in March, Feuell said the division is relaunching a fleet advisory board — called Ram Professional Council — “to engage directly with our commercial customers of all fleet sizes.”

Relaunch of Ram Fleet Advisory Board

“The Ram Professional Council will help us to refine all aspects of the business, including marketing and communications, training, support for sales and service personnel, expanding our upfitter offerings, and also driving greater process efficiency,” she said.

Feuell said Ram is “strengthening its partnership and relationship with Cummins.” (Read: Diesel powerplants will continue to be available for ProMaster vans and Ram pickups.) Feuell called the range of Ram’s powertrain options between gas, diesel and electric a “pick-your-power strategy.”

She also sees “some additional whitespace opportunities in select segments like chassis cab.”

New Small Van on the Way

And then Feuell slipped this into her prepared remarks:

“In North America, Ram will launch new products, including a new van that will slot below ProMaster and will be offered in both ICE and battery electric propulsion systems, as well as a mid-sized pickup for the Mexico market.”

Ram wouldn’t comment further on the new van or when it will launch. Yet it signals the return of a small commercial van to the U.S. market in a segment that the major automakers abandoned last year.

Reorganizing into Ram Commercial

Kayser, who heads the new Ram Professional, discussed the decision-making around the new division that evolved from Ram Commercial.

The organizational restructuring was announced at NTEA’s Work Truck Week on March 6 and included the appointment of Jeff Kommor as head of commercial sales for Stellantis.

Kayser said Ram Professional reorganizes Ram’s teams for better coordination between operations, product development, sales, upfitters, Ram dealers, and commercial customers.

He added that his team “is working to restructure commercial dealer agreements and commercial policies to make Ram easier to do business with.”

And he added this nugget: “We have obtained leadership approval to bring back configurations that have previously been removed on the B-to-B sales side of the business,” but did not elaborate.

Think of Ram Professional as the Stellantis version of Ford Pro and GM Envolve — which deliver an ecosystem of services to commercial customers around and beyond the vehicle.

Free2Move’s Connected Vehicle Services

Similar to its competitors, Stellantis offers connected vehicle services. Through its Free2Move division, fleet customers can access vehicle tracking, geofencing, theft recovery, vehicle health reports, remote vehicle control, EV battery monitoring, and over-the-air updates).

Enterprise-level fleets can access a direct data feed and deeper vehicle data analysis through another new division, Mobilisights.

Customers can also opt for another powerful benefit of factory-embedded telematics: real-time vehicle tracking from the factory to the upfitter or conversion company to the dealer.

Upfitting Commercial EVs

Kayser stressed (and the others too) that Ram trucks and vans are “the most upfit friendly vehicles in the industry.”

A core competency of Ram is its traditional relationships with hundreds of upfitters and equipment manufacturers. They’re bringing this into the commercial EV space and see as a market differentiator the ability to deliver exponentially more configurations than, say, an independent electric van maker and then deliver the requisite after-sale support.

In other news, Ram’s BusinessLink dealer network, which focuses on smaller commercial customers, has grown to over 1,400 dealers. As of July, all Ram dealers can sell ProMaster vans. (Some only sold pickups before.)

Stellantis Financial Services is now offering lines of credit of up to $12 million, and commercial customers are now able to finance up to 100% of the cost of standard upfits.

Class 2 Van Segment Statistics

Sowers delivered the product deep dive into the ProMaster EV, but we’ll save that for next week with the drive impressions.

He also offered some statistics on the Class 2 large van segment. In 2019, the segment saw sales of 242,253 units. Those numbers dipped during covid and the supply chain disruptions to a low of 176,086 units in 2022, and then recovered to 194,559 units in 2023.

Ram believes the segment will peak in 2026 at 234,000 units, and then will remain “stable and robust through the balance of the decade.”

Sowers said 16% of the large van segment is “retail,” or one van to one customer. The remaining 84% consists of commercial business, with 65% being large fleet, and almost 20% small businesses that would go through BusinessLink dealers.

Looking at 2023 for the full year, Ram had 29.8% of the Class 2 van market. (Though that excludes passenger vans, which Ram doesn’t sell.)

In 2023, “The big news was upgrades in our plant,” he said. “It took some downtime to significantly increase our production capacity. We really haven't talked about this publicly, but it's over a 60% increase in the throughput of that plant that's really going to fuel our growth going into the future.”

In a later sit-down with Sowers, he mentioned that production capacity and order-to-delivery times for ProMaster are back to 2019 levels — welcome news for fleets that suffered through the supply constraints of 2021 and 2022.   

A Small Van Alternative

As we wait for more details on Ram’s new small van for the North American market, Sowers said that the increase in production capacity is benefitting the availability of the ProMaster with the 118-inch wheelbase.

Though not as small as the ProMaster City, the 118-inch wheelbase ProMaster is the smallest of the Class 2b van segment and offers similar functionality to the small van class.