Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa is making it clear that improving vehicle quality is no longer being treated as a side project inside the sprawling automaker. According to Automotive News, Stellantis has established nearly 50 dedicated “quality war rooms” and brought in more than 2,000 engineers as part of a much larger effort to identify problems, correct them faster, and keep future issues from reaching customers. Filosa says the company is moving “very, very, very quickly” to improve quality, and considering some of the issues we have experienced firsthand, that sense of urgency is welcome.

The timing certainly gets our attention after spending a week reviewing the 2026 Dodge Charger R/T Plus Sixpack S.O. 4-Door. We experienced numerous software glitches, bugs, slow responses, system freezes, and other quality issues that regularly interfered with the otherwise promising infotainment experience. At times, basic functions such as changing the volume or returning to the home screen simply would not respond, while the digital gauge cluster occasionally failed to behave as expected. None of those issues stranded the Charger or affected its core drivability, but they absolutely hurt the experience of living with a brand-new vehicle. That is why we are pleased to see Stellantis taking concrete steps to address problems like these rather than simply dismissing them as growing pains.

Filosa discussed the effort during the Automotive News Congress in Detroit, explaining that Stellantis is approaching lingering quality concerns with dedicated teams rather than relying solely on the traditional chain of engineering, manufacturing, and warranty processes. Calling them “quality war rooms” may sound dramatic, but the scale of the initiative suggests Stellantis understands how important this issue has become. Individual teams are reportedly focusing on specific problems across the company’s enormous portfolio of brands and vehicles, giving engineers a much more direct path toward finding root causes and implementing fixes.

The addition of more than 2,000 engineers is especially significant. Stellantis has previously said many of those engineering hires are supporting quality improvements and faster product development, particularly in North America. The company has also acknowledged that previous operational decisions did not deliver the quality performance it expected. For consumers, the important part is what happens next. Hiring engineers and creating internal task forces means little unless owners begin seeing fewer warning lights, fewer software resets, fewer trips back to dealerships, and more vehicles that feel thoroughly finished from the moment they leave the factory.

Software has become one of the industry’s biggest quality battlegrounds because today’s vehicles depend on it for virtually everything. Infotainment, digital instrument clusters, driver-assistance systems, vehicle settings, cameras, smartphone connectivity, and even basic controls can now be tied together through increasingly complicated electronic architectures. That complexity makes proper validation more important than ever. Our Charger experience was a perfect example. The hardware and underlying vehicle had plenty of merit, but software problems repeatedly pulled attention away from the things the Charger did well. Adding more technology only helps when that technology works consistently.

Stellantis is also placing a measurable target on its quality push. Filosa has said the company intends to reach the first quartile for quality by 2028 across the segments and markets in which it competes. In practical terms, Stellantis wants its products sitting among the top 25 percent for quality rather than merely showing incremental improvement. That is an ambitious objective for a company responsible for Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Maserati, Peugeot, Citroën, Opel, and several other brands spread across different markets and product categories.

Getting there will require more than repairing current vehicles through software updates or addressing problems after they reach dealerships. The more important change would be catching issues before production vehicles ever land in customer driveways. The auto industry has become increasingly aggressive about launch schedules, complex infotainment platforms, electrification, connected services, and adding features that sometimes feel as though they arrived before the underlying systems were fully polished. There is nothing wrong with pushing technology forward, but reliability and basic functionality still matter more to most buyers than having the newest software feature on launch day.

For Stellantis, these new quality war rooms and thousands of engineers represent an encouraging acknowledgment that the company has work to do. We saw enough frustrating bugs in our 2026 Dodge Charger review to know the problems are not merely theoretical, which makes this initiative particularly relevant from our perspective. Now the challenge is turning all that manpower and urgency into noticeably better vehicles. If Stellantis really can solve problems before customers discover them and make software reliability as important as horsepower, styling, and technology, that would be a meaningful step in the right direction.