ProsHuge rangeMidgate expands bed capacityManeuverable for its sizeConsTorque steerLow-grade interiorMassively heavy
The Chevrolet Silverado EV is claimed to be the longest-range electric pickup truck you can buy today, with an estimated 440 miles between charges. That isn’t just a highlight, it’s the highlight. That’s the same as its GMC-branded sibling, the mechanically similar Sierra EV, more than the longest-range Rivian R1T (420 miles), and more than, well, no other trucks come close. In our real-world highway range test, the Silverado did an astounding 401 miles. If you’re looking for something electric with a bed that’s also enormous and can go about as far on a charge as a regular gas-fed full-size pickup, stop reading. This is your truck.
… But you should really keep reading, because the Silverado EV’s ace up its sleeve is neat—though this emperor has no clothes. Well, actually, it’s wearing pants, at least, very heavy pants. Chevrolet gets to the big-time range number in a uniquely American way: by stuffing in as many batteries as it can fit in the Silverado EV’s floor, even stacking them atop one another in a double-stuffed-Oreo arrangement totaling 205 kWh. Like other similar General Motors battery-pack setups, this one’s split into two large 400-volt modules capable of charging in parallel or series, permitting 800-volt charging speeds.
In our fast-charging test, the Silverado EV RST chugged—OK, added—118 miles of range in just 15 minutes. After 30 minutes of DC fast charging, it added 236 miles of range, and in 45 minutes, it took on 321 miles, with the average charge rate over that period a high 231 kW. Over a full charge from 5 to 100 percent, we still averaged a mighty impressive 168 kW. (As is the case with all EVs, the overall charge rate plunges as the battery nears a full charge.) So long as you aren’t stymied by inoperable chargers or abandoned Chevy Bolts hogging 350-kW stations, road-tripping a Silverado EV won’t be a slog.
Big Boy, Big Moves
Nor will the drive itself be arduous or tiring. The Silverado EV is quiet, comfortable, and maneuverable, with four-corner air springs, adaptive dampers, and four-wheel steering shrinking its perceived size to that of a large SUV. Washboard surfaces and sharper impacts can be felt, though; there is just no way they wouldn’t be, given the Silverado EV RST’s 24-inch wheels and low-profile tires.
With 754 hp and 785 lb-ft of torque combined from its front and rear motors, it silently (well, if you turn off the silly noises) whooshes up to 60 mph in 4.0 seconds flat. That figure—and its 12.6-second quarter-mile time—isn’t head-snapping stuff, particularly in a world that includes EV trucks like the Tesla Cybertruck Beast and Rivian R1T Quad, which both do those deeds in 2.5 seconds and 11 seconds or less. But it’s plenty quick for most and notable largely (pun intended) because the Chevy weighs nearly 9,000 pounds.
That’s the penalty for the Silverado EV’s range: a one-ton weight disadvantage relative to the Tesla and Rivian. Sure, the Chevy is larger—by quite a bit in the case of the Rivian, only slightly so compared to the Tesla—but mostly, it’s the batteries that weigh it down. The Silverado EV simply has way more of them, its 205.0-kWh capacity dwarfing the Rivian’s 141.5 kWh and the Tesla’s 123.0 kWh. As a result, the Chevy’s 1,500-pound payload and 10,000-pound max towing capacities lag behind those two competitors (1,760 pounds and 11,000 pounds for the Rivian Dual Performance Max, and 2,500 pounds and 11,000 pounds for the base Cybertruck).
We’ll award some points back to the Silverado EV for its payload and towing performances—it’s about as pleasant to haul with as the Cybertruck and much better than the smaller Rivian. All three have air suspensions, but only the Rivian’s ride turns hard in back with the bed loaded up or a trailer dragging from the hitch. And the Chevy stops surprisingly short from 60 mph despite its mass, in an OK 132 feet; the much lighter Lightning does it in 123 feet. Braking in general is satisfying, mostly because of GM’s excellent one-pedal mode, which can even reliably bring the Silverado EV to a halt when towing a trailer.
One issue we’re a little surprised Chevrolet didn’t tune out of the Silverado, though, is torque steer. This bugaboo is a hitchhiker on the first Ultium-platform GM pickup truck out of the gate, the now two-year-old GMC Hummer EV; at least on that big-tired, off-road-oriented, and more powerful beast, the sashaying and twisting on its wheels under hard acceleration adds to the fun, rowdy experience. Here, on the more pedestrian, big-tent-appeal Silverado EV, torque steer is a head scratcher. Accelerate hard—or dip into the WOW launch mode (Wide Open Watts)—and you’ll be chasing the truck left and right until your right foot levels off the pedal input. This unfortunate trait can induce sway when towing a trailer; we even tried disabling the rear-wheel steering via a touchscreen button to see if it’d stabilize things, to no avail. Keep your inputs gentle, and things are more settled.
Hidden Value
Appreciating the Silverado EV requires appreciation of its underlying technologies and the range afforded by that battery pack. Because if you were to drive the truck without anyone telling you how far it can go between plug-ins, the RST trim level’s $96,495 price tag would come as quite the shock. That figure puts it among the highest-end full-size trucks out there—regardless of what powers them—a field that includes the truly luxurious Ford F-150 and F-150 Lightning Platinum models, Ram’s new 1500 Tungsten, and the mechanically identical GMC Sierra EV Denali Edition 1. That last one is the biggest asterisk here, given it costs just $3,000 more yet delivers a wholly more luxurious impression that’d have you guessing the price difference is far greater.
Cabin materials in the Silverado EV would be unimpressive on a standard-issue full-size pickup costing half as much. There is hard plastic with an unpleasant pebbled graining molded in—which Chevy’s been using for literal decades—nearly everywhere you look. Things get particularly bleak in the rear seat. A few splashes of silver trim, red-painted accents, and red and blue contrast stitching and seat piping break up what is otherwise a dour, all-black space. If not for the leather seats, this might feel like a base-model Suburban or Tahoe. Again, competitors’ top trim levels put forth far more convincing justifications for their near-six-figure price tags, though the Silverado EV is at least more outwardly “nice” than the brutishly minimalist Cybertruck.
Much like the hardware hidden below the surface, the cabin’s few highlights aren’t immediately apparent. The display ahead of the driver and the gigantic central touchscreen with Google Built-In tech are sharp and stunning and generally work well with fast response and clean layouts. We wish the My Mode driver-adjustable settings for throttle, steering, and other controls—essentially a custom drive mode—could be found anywhere near the Normal, Sport, Tow/Haul, and Off-Road drive mode menu (they’re curiously buried elsewhere), but that’s about the only major miss in the tech stack.
And then there is the midgate, a throwback to the Chevrolet Avalanche first launched two decades ago. Here, it’s evolved to include a 60/40 split, so you can extend only part of the bed at a time, if need be, or all of it, into the cabin, to about 9 feet in length. It’s handy if you regularly lug long objects around (you can even keep those objects dry under an available tonneau cover, provided they’re not taller than the bed). Functionally, the process for lowering the rear seat backs and bulkhead sections to open the midgate is fiddly and takes practice. Instructions molded into the kick panels aside each seat cushion are covered up by the folded seat backs after the third step; there is one more listed, but those cover only the seat folding actions, not the bulkhead and rear window. Buttons release the bulkheads, but because of the 60/40 split and panel overlap for improved sealing, one side must be lowered before the other. Taking out the rear window is, ironically, an opaque process requiring flipping two levers and then a third catch lever—but best be ready to catch the glass as it pops out. You can stow the window on the bulkhead, but it must be loaded in before the bulkhead is lowered (at which point it’s covered up, facing down). Again, it’s a clever feature but with a limited use case, and it’s persnickety to actually take advantage of.
Will customers be able to look past the Chevrolet Silverado EV’s skin-deep flaws to appreciate its outstanding mechanicals and boundary-pushing driving range? Perhaps, and perhaps the Silverado EV’s forthcoming cheaper variants will deliver more face value with a lower price tag. But for now, it’s difficult to look past the RST’s mediocre cabin, high price, or the barely more expensive and much nicer GMC Sierra EV Denali, which is capable of very nearly the same range on paper. In practice—meaning in our MotorTrend EV range test—it actually outperformed the Chevy with an astounding 422-mile performance, making it the EV truck to buy if ultimate range is your ultimate goal. Provided you have the extra three grand or so to swing …
