Stellantis plans to discontinue the Ram ProMaster City, the smaller of the truck brand’s two van offerings, after the 2022 model year as the segment dwindles rapidly in the U.S. and automakers focus on adding larger electric vans instead.
News that the ProMaster City, which debuted in 2015, will go out of production comes a week after Automotive News reported that Ford would stop selling the Transit Connect in the U.S. at the end of 2023.
Nissan ended North American sales of all small and full-size vans in 2021, and GM shelved the Chevrolet City Express small van, which was produced by Nissan, in 2018.
“That particular segment has shrunk every year for the last four or five years, and it’s overall become very difficult from a regulatory environment and also from that volume-commitment perspective,” Dave Sowers, head of Ram Commercial, told Automotive News. “So we’re really refocusing all of our efforts in the commercial van segments over on the ProMaster.”
ProMaster City deliveries peaked in 2016 at 15,972 before falling in each of the next four years to 10,409 in 2020. After a 40 percent rise in 2021, ProMaster City sales fell by a third in the first half of this year, to 8,593.
The ProMaster City is built in Turkey. Sowers said shipments to dealers are slated to continue through the first quarter of 2023. The automaker planned to end ProMaster City production in 2021 but decided to keep it going for another year.
Consumers who turned to the smaller ProMaster City for fuel economy, Sowers said, could be drawn by the upcoming electric ProMaster that arrives in 2023. Amazon will be the first commercial customer for the battery-electric ProMaster.
“The fuel prices historically pushed people to smaller vans,” Sowers said. “Now we’re going to start looking at electrified solutions that are more capable and more flexible than what was there in the past.”