You’re sitting at a red light. Suddenly, without you touching a single control, the dashboard chirps, an alarm flashes, the transmission shifts into Park, and the electronic parking brake locks up instantly. Welcome to the ghost-in-the-machine reality facing a growing number of 2025 Ram 1500 owners.
What sounds like a creepypasta plot is actually documented line by line in official National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) filings, where driver after driver describes a brand-new pickup that randomly decides driving has become completely optional.
Stellantis famously rebuilt the Ram 1500 from the ground up for 2025, ditching the legendary 5.7-liter HEMI V8 for the all-new twin-turbo 3.0-liter Hurricane inline-six, offered in Standard Output and a ferocious 540-horsepower High Output trim on the RHO. That same Hurricane mill now powers Dodge Charger police pursuit vehicles, making the Ram 1500 a critical test case for Stellantis’s heavy-tech future.
But browse NHTSA’s public safety database, and the initial reliability picture looks alarming: 337 complaints and eight recalls recorded for the standard 2025 model in under two years, plus another 40 complaints and four recalls specifically targeting the RHO.
Filter those reports by powertrain, and a bizarre pattern emerges. The auto start-stop system triggers an internal malfunction, forcing the truck into Park and engaging the parking brake while the vehicle is still rolling.
One Florida owner reported a car wash fender-bender after the truck slammed on the brakes unprovoked. Another driver briefly lost steering, throttle, and brake response while creeping through a parking lot. Oddly enough, NHTSA hasn’t launched a formal investigation yet. That is just bureaucratic protocol. A complaint is merely a data point, and until federal regulators recognize a clear trend, no investigation occurs.
Mechanical snags exist too, but software is clearly the real culprit here. Out of eight recalls issued since October 2024, the digital instrument cluster had problems twice for going pitch black, alongside glitchy backup cameras, disengaging stability control, wrong tire pressure readings, and trailer brake failures. Seven out of eight recalls trace back to lines of code rather than metal hardware, and the 2026 model has already accumulated four separate wiring recalls in seven months.
Stellantis advertises America’s most reliable full-size pickup with a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty, yet their 2025 annual report quietly reveals the trusty HEMI V8 has returned to the lineup.
