The $100K Silverado EV Is All Battery, No Luxury

The Chevrolet Silverado EV will get the job done. It lives up to its impressive range figures, has a trick “midgate” that adds genuine functionality, and enough onboard power to juice up tools, camping gear, or even your home. But all of this capability comes at a price—literally and figuratively.

This truck weighs about 9,000 pounds. Its ride, at least in RST form, is compromised as a result. And the interior doesn’t feel worthy of a hundred-grand price tag. For that kind of money, I’m not sure this particular Silverado EV works. The competition will still find this truck a tough nut to crack, though, because of what it offers in spades: capability.

The Silverado EV is GM’s first electric pickup aimed at doing real work. Small numbers of the base work truck, the WT, are already out on the road. Now the automaker has unveiled the upscale RST model, the equipment-laden top trim designed for regular people (with six figures lying around) to use every day.

Let’s start with what the Silverado gets right, because its specs are impressive. The battery pack is 213.7 kilowatt-hours gross, with a usable capacity of around 204 kilowatt-hours. This behemoth amount of energy is a vital piece of the puzzle. To convince pickup buyers to go electric, you need to have more than enough range and the ability to charge quickly. This pack enables both of those things, with 350 kilowatts fast charging and more range than any of its competition; 440 miles. The power and torque this pack can provide are also impressive: 754 horsepower and 785 pound-feet of torque.

The big battery also addresses issues with trailering. It’s reasonable to expect any electric truck’s range will be sliced almost in half while pulling a heavy load. The Silverado can tow up to 10,000 pounds, which is a lot. With that much stuff dragging behind you, it would be best if you didn’t have to stop to charge on the way to your destination at all. This is how Chevy attempts to address the charging-with-a-trailer problem: by mitigating it all together with massive amounts of range.

But the battery is long, thick, and heavy. As such, the truck needs a long wheelbase. That’s fine, the RST has rear-wheel steering to get the turning circle down to around a Chevy Bolt’s. But if you put regular-sized wheels and tires on it, the Silverado would look like, well, when an orthopedic shoe and a longboard love each other very much… 

To fix this issue, 24-inch wheels come standard—and the proportions now look acceptable. But now each spinning corner of the truck probably weighs more than a hundred pounds. That’s a lot of unsprung inertia. The heavy electric drive units are also mounted to subframes, which like to move around with respect to the body.

There is no amount of adaptive air suspension or magnetic shocks in Senior Editor Chris Perkins’s wildest dreams to solve this problem. In any of its three suspension settings, this truck finds a way to be upset with the road surface. In its softest mode, it never really settles, undulating over rises and dips. Its default setting is borderline acceptable, but still not very good. In sport mode—yes, one of the heaviest pickups ever produced has a sport setting for the suspension—you would notice if you ran over Osmosis Jones.

The weight also affects the performance. That 754 hp is a lot for any truck, and once you get this thing going fast, there’s an almost alarming sense of mass. Launch control, the so-called Wide Open Watts mode (WOW), is impressive, sort of like one of those Raytheon drone missiles with the pop-out katanas. You don’t want to get in its way. A sway left or right under hard acceleration hits you right in the confidence, with corrections demanding a delicate touch.

Though it’s arguably not in step with a $100,000 price tag, the Silverado’s interior works well. Heated and cooled seats are available in the RST with a large 17.0-inch infotainment screen and an 11.0-inch digital instrument cluster. These components are shared with several other EVs in GM’s lineup, sure, but with a built-in suite of Google apps and services like Maps and Assistant, it all works without lag or fuss. 

Thanks to that long wheelbase, rear legroom is also plentiful. The cabin’s flat floor, in combination with its large glass roof, makes for a pleasant—if not artfully adorned—place to spend time. This is a pickup truck, and if you don’t like this one, a different interior will exist in the form of the GMC Sierra EV.

Wind noise is one thing that can’t be avoided with such a massive front fascia, and it will naturally get worse if you decide to crack open the “midgate,” a convertible panel at the body’s rear bulkhead separating the cab from the bed. That said, the utility the midgate offers is huge. This truck’s ability to carry up to 1,500 pounds of extended loads is almost unparalleled, and if a bed cap is added, the Silverado EV will doubtlessly have one of the largest usable cargo bays of any pickup.

Dispensing energy for other things is also possible. 10.2 kW of electricity can be accessed from receptacles in the bed—a ton of power that can be sustained for a very long time. GM showed off this capability by powering a large camper towed behind the vehicle. Around 50 amps at 120 volts, if the label on the camper itself was accurate. That’s only about 6.0 kW, so the truck still had quite a lot of power to give.

In short, the huge battery is great for so many things. What a shame the Silverado has to weigh four and a half tons as a result. 

Altogether, this truck adds up to something impressive. It brings the heat to its competition in almost every key metric. Is that enough to look past its flaws? I think most people, especially fleet customers, will be able to see right through the weight, ride, and handling, in WT trim. 

In a high-trim RST truck like this, I’m not so sure. If you want a big tough electric behemoth, you can already get a Hummer EV, and the GMC Sierra EV will also be out soon, too. The Silverado EV could be a winner, but I don’t think many people will be willing to shell out so much dough for a truck that doesn’t feel like a hundred grand on the inside, or feel like a hundred grand to drive. Once the price reaches the astronomical heights of the RST, it leaves something to be desired, especially compared to its ICE competition.