The upcoming 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV has the potential to be one of the key vehicles that helps transition the industry towards electrification. With Ford’s full-size F-150 winning the sales crown decade after decade, the electrified trucks likely have the best chance of success to sell in large volume. Taking a significantly different approach than Ford’s F-150 Lightning, the Silverado EV shares pretty much only the name with its conventional internal combustion counterpart. Plenty has already been written about vehicle range and how the F-150 and Silverado EV stack up towards one another. What we’d like to focus on is what a dramatic shift this EV’s styling is for Chevy trucks. Read more…
Love At First Charge
It’s not often that we anticipate testing a vehicle as much as we did with Chevrolet’s Volt. That’s because it’s not often that a vehicle comes along packing a powertrain as revolutionary as GM’s Voltec system. And it was because of this advanced propulsion system and its lightning paced development that we were preparing ourselves to overlook a few rough spots in the days before the vehicle’s delivery. We figured that if mighty Toyota still hadn’t sanded off all the sharp edges on its hybrid powertrain after three generations of Prius development the Volt and its more advanced, but still first gen, technology could be a bit of a half-baked science experiment in the real-world hands of our editors. The truth, it turns out, is that GM has managed to surprise our jaded staff with the level of refinement we enjoyed in our production-spec Volt. It’s so astonishing that it’s difficult to put into words, but we’re confident that after digesting both our written and video reviews you’ll understand our level of admiration for what the General’s best and brightest have accomplished with the world’s first extended-range electric vehicle. Read more…
While Chevrolet decided to go electric in a practical manner with the compact Volt sedan, Dodge went for broke and based their EV (shown here at the 2009 NAIAS) on a Lotus Europa S. Sadly, we won’t see this vehicle come to fruition as the Fiat partnership has dissolved the Chrysler ENVI electric initiative altogether. With a claimed 150 to 200 mile range the Circuit EV was within spitting distance of another Lotus based EV sports car, the Tesla roadster, when its batteries finally decided to take a rest. The Circuit’s lithium-ion battery pack combined with the 200-kW motor could output 268-hp and an instant 480 lb-ft of torque. None too shabby for a green bean!
