Tag Archives: Chevrolet Silverado EV

2024 NACTOY Winners Examined

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By Gary S. Vasilash

This morning the 2024 North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year (NACTOY) awards were announced.

And with no further ado. . .

  • North American Car of the Year: Toyota Prius & Prius Prime
  • North American Truck of the Year: Ford Super Duty
  • North American Utility Vehicle of the Year: Kia EV9
Kia EV9: 2024 NACTOY Utility of the Year. In 2023 Kia also took that NACTOY category with the EV6. Seems that company really has it going on with electric utes. (Image: Kia)

To look at this a more closely:

The Car category also included the Hyundai IONIQ 6 EV and the Honda Accord. Several people whom I’ve talked with (full disclosure: I am one of the 50 jurors for the awards) thought it would more likely be the Accord than the Prius.

While all three are excellent cars, the transformation of the Prius from something that was somewhat awkward to an object of desire (with really good gas mileage) undoubtedly pushed it over the top.

In trucks, the Ford Super Duty was up against the Chevrolet Colorado midsize pickup and the Chevrolet Silverado EV. The NACTOY awards are consumer-centric, not commercial-centric. Which led me to wonder about the Super Duty being a finalist. Then two things happened:

  1. I talked with Detroit Free Press car reviewer Mark Phelan (also a juror) who pointed out that plenty of people buy Super Duty trucks as daily drivers
  2. I spent time behind the wheel of a Super Duty and discovered that in terms of the tech and the amenities it gave nothing up compared with cars or utilities

That the Silverado EV didn’t take the trophy probably surprised some people at GM HQ because this is their Ultium-based offering in the full-size truck segment and it betters the specs of the Ford F-150 Lightning, the EV pickup that won the NACTOY award in 2023. Perhaps the $74,800 price for a work truck kept Chevy from winning.

And in utilities, the finalists that the Kia EV9 faced were the Genesis Electrified GV70 and the Hyundai Kona/Kona EV. In mid-November when the finalists were announced the Kona wasn’t on the list and the Volvo EX30, a small electric crossover, was. But Volvo had to pull the vehicle from consideration because it wasn’t going to have vehicles in-market before the end of 2023.

Two things about the utility situation:

  1. Kia also won the category last year with the EV6
  2. As Genesis is a sibling company with Hyundai and Kia, it is clear that the three companies have remarkable capabilities in the utility space—including the electric utility space

And that second point raises another consideration:

The traditional domestics had the Truck category. But nothing in the other two categories.

Is that a model for long-term success?

The Silverado EV Range (Non) Issue

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By Gary S. Vasilash

There is some consternation regarding the size of the battery required to propel the 2024 Silverado 4WT some 450 miles on a charge. Although GM hasn’t revealed the stats for the Ultium battery pack (200 kWh?), one can only assume that it is sizeable.

This is, after all, a work truck version of the Silverado.

There is the RST which offers a 400-mile range. It also offers the ability to go from 0 to 60 in <4.5 seconds.

Either way, there is the requirement for a lot of lithium and associated battery materials.

So some people are concerned that the battery is just too big.

But here’s the thing:

A 2023 Silverado with a 6.2-liter V8, 4WD and either a double cab or crew cab gets a combined average of 18 mpg. As the truck has a 24-gallon fuel tank, this means a range of 432 miles.

This is what truck buyers expect. Capability. Which includes not only the ability to carry cargo and to tow equipment on the hitch, but to be able to operate without worrying about refueling, whether in the form of liquid or electrons.

Chevrolet is addressing needs and expectations.

Somehow offering a vastly decreased range predicated on how many miles the average driver actually goes in a day would not be be acceptable, 10.7-cubic-foot frunk notwithstanding.

General Motors: About Those EV Sales. . .

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By Gary S. Vasilash

General Motors was rather chuffed with its U.S. sales results for Q2 2023 as well as for the first half of the year.

It delivered 691,978 vehicles in Q2, up 18.8% from the same period last year. And for the first half it has delivered 1,295,186, or 18.3% more than in the first half of 2022.

Drilling into the electric vehicle space, the company sold in Q2 13,959 Chevy Bolt EV/Bolt EUV models, up an impressive 101%. Even more impressive, with Bolt sales of 33,659 for the first half, that’s a 360.9% increase. However, due to a problem with battery fires that occurred in the summer of 2022 General Motors stopped production of the vehicles as it handled a recall, so there were fewer vehicles available last year. What’s more, when it brought the vehicles back on the market it did so making the pricing exceedingly attractive—even for people who otherwise wouldn’t have considered an EV.

Then there are two other EVs in the GM portfolio:

  • Cadillac Lyriq
  • Hummer EV

As for Cadillac, it delivered 1,348 Lyriqs in Q2 and a total of 2,316 during the first half. The vehicle wasn’t available during the first half of 2022 so there is no comparison.

As for the Hummer EV, there were 47 deliveries in Q2 and a total of 49 for the first half. Yes, two were delivered in Q1 2023. Those numbers are down 82.7 and 86.8%, respectively. There were 185 days between January 1 and June 30. 49 Lyriqs.

All in, General Motors sold 36,024 electric vehicles during the first half of 2023.

To put that number in perspective, know that it sold 78,169 Chevy Malibus during the same period, and while nary a word is pronounced about the importance of that midsize sedan to its future portfolio, for the past few years there have been more pronouncements about how EVs are going to be transformative to the company’s fortunes than mere mortals can imagine.

Of course, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

But there are two factors that need to be kept in mind.

  1. GM has announced Bolt production will end in November. On the Chevrolet shopping site it is able to proclaim that the Bolt is “America’s Most Affordable EV.” Strike that from the books.
  2. When the Chevy Silverado EV was first announced the company talked about the WT (as in “work truck”) trim starting at about $39,900. However, it recently said that when the first WTs roll off the line, they will be 4WT trim, capable of 450 miles and featuring AWD, for a price of . . .$79,800

Hard to see how the company is going to have sustainably large EV sales numbers as it goes into the future.

It may have the capacity–lots of capacity–but there are another two factors that come into play:

  1. Execution
  2. Market demand for vehicles that aren’t necessarily leading in affordability.

EV Trucks & Three-Card Monte

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By Gary S. Vasilash

When Chevrolet announced the Silverado EV last year, it said that the price for the initial work truck version would have an “Estimated MSRP staring around $39,900.”

That was for the work truck version. Get the contractors in and those who are simply looking to look cool will follow. Possibly in droves.

What does the Silverado EV 4WT work truck, which is presently in production, cost?

$79,800.

There is a forthcoming 3WT version with a decreased range from the 4WT. The 4WT has an EPA rating of 450 miles per charge.

The 3WT will be tagged at $74,800.

What is shocking is that people aren’t more shocked by this estimation being off by some 50%.

When the 2024 Chevy Equinox EV was introduced last fall, the claim Chevy made was “a starting price of around $30,000.”

Mary Barra, GM chair and CEO, said, “With the flexibility of GM’s Ultium Platform, we are bringing to market vehicles at nearly every price point and for every purpose.”

Really?

The Cadillac Lyriq is on the Ultium platform. It starts at $58,590.

The GMC Hummer EV uses it, too, and good luck finding a price for it on gmc.com. The 2022 Edition 1 model started at $112,595, and while the subsequent models are less expensive, odds are that’s a relative reduction.

Every price point for Thurston Howell III, perhaps.

Kelley Blue Book has it that the average transaction price for an electric vehicle in May was down $9,370 from the price paid in May 2022. Now it is $55,488, or a 14% decrease.

There’s the Silverado EV 4WT 50% increase.

And what expectation should there be that there will be a $30K Equinox, and if there is a $30,000 Equinox will there be a sufficient number such that it won’t be like sightings of the Loch Ness Monster (“I think I saw one. . .”)?

This just isn’t a GM phenomenon.

Ford launched the F-150 Lightning Pro in May 2022 with a starting MSRP of $39,975. By August it was $55,974. At ford.com right now it starts at $59,974.

Of course, at the top of the page for the Lightning it says in a bright blue box:

“Select Models Currently Eligible for $7,500 in Potential Federal Tax Credits.”

Let Uncle Sam mitigate the price increases.

Engineering the ’24 Chevrolet Silverado EV

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By Gary S. Vasilash

“Let’s determine what must be true to make it happen—and then let’s make it happen.”

Although it sounds rather simple, what Nicole Kraatz is referring to is the approach that she and her team took to product development under the restrictions that were presented to them because of COVID-19.

Business wasn’t as usual.

And what they were, and are, developing is something that is unlike what had been done before and absolutely important in the offerings of GM:

Kraatz is chief engineer of the Chevrolet Silverado EV.

Imagine: they had to develop a new vehicle while, in many cases, working at their kitchen tables, not the engineering center where there is immediate access to people and tech, not situations where you have to ask the kids to stop streaming because the Internet connection is wonky.

Determine what needs to be done. Then do it.

///

Pickup trucks are essential to the offerings of Chevy in particular and GM in, well, general.

In 2021 Chevrolet delivered a total 1,437,671 vehicles, of which 529,765 were Silverados.

GM sold a total of 2,218,228, vehicles, so Silverado is nearly a quarter of all of its sales.

2024 Silverado EV RST, style meets capability and electricity. (Image: Chevrolet)

In addition to which, GM is committed to transforming its vehicle portfolio to all-electric in the years to come, and is in the process of spending some $35-billion in transforming from combustion, including $2.2-billion at the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center, which has been transformed to Factory ZERO, where the Siliverado EV will be built.

The 2024 model is interesting compared with the cross-town rival’s F-150 Lightning in that the Chevy is a new vehicle from the tires up, with nothing being brought over from the conventional truck, while the Ford is largely the combustion-based truck that is electrified.

(In the case of the Chevy, the Ultium platform is being used, an all-new EV battery-based architecture that provides a range of modularity such that pickup trucks and midsize SUVs—as in the Cadillac Lyriq—and other vehicles can be based on it.)

The Silverado EV will come in two versions at the start: the WT and the RST. The former is the work truck version, the sort of thing that contractors would be interested in as it will offer 8,000 pounds of towing and 1,200 pounds of payload.

The RST is the truck that someone will boast to their neighbors about was it offers everything from four-wheel steering to automatic adaptive air suspension, and when the Wide Open Watts mode is activated, it will have a 0 to 60 mph time of less than 4.5 seconds. (Remember: this is a full-size pickup truck.)

Both will have an estimated range of 400 miles on a charge and be capable of handling DC fast charging (up to 350 kW).

The Silverado EV represents an opportunity to Kraatz and her team to take the learnings of more than 100 years of GM trucks and make it something new.

Kraatz talks all about the Silverado EV on this edition of “Autoline After Hours” with John McElroy, Joann Muller of Axios What’s Next, and me.

And you can see it here.

About Those EV Range Numbers

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By Gary S. Vasilash

One of the things that OEMs are touting is the range that their electric vehicles can travel before they need a charge.

This, of course, is a means by which the dreaded consumer “range anxiety” with EVs can be assuaged.

For example, when Mercedes introduced its VISION EQXX concept car last week one of the points that people stressed about this sleek concept is that it has a range on the order of 620 miles.

When Chevy introduced the 2024 Silverado EV it noted that it has an estimated range of 400 miles.

While not a Mercedes, think about a Hyundai Sonata Hybrid. Stylish. Seats five. Fully fitted with tech. Depending on which trim level, it returns a combined miles per gallon rating of either 52 mpg or 47 mpg.

So, with its 13.2-gallon fuel tank, this means that you have range of 686 miles or 620.4 miles. In a car that you can buy today. (Assuming that you can find one.)

Then the Silverado.

While the numbers aren’t available for the 2022 3.0L I-6 turbo-diesel, there are for the ’21 model with that engine. The 4WD truck has a combined miles per gallon rating of 26 mpg.

The Crew Cab has a 24-gallon tank.

So this means that the Silverado diesel has a range of 624 miles.

Somehow that electric 400-mile range is impressive only for an EV.

And then, of course, there is that whole thing about charging.

One of the features of the ’24 Silverado is that thanks to its fast-charging capability, one can get 100 miles of range within 10 minutes.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, it takes an average of two minutes to fill a vehicle with liquid fuel.

Somehow that 10-minute charge doesn’t seem all that impressive.