Charged EVs | GMC Sierra EV Denali Max Range: Luxury ride or tricked-out work truck? Why not both?

Here in the Land of Pickup Trucks, there’s a truck for every taste—GM alone offers at least two dozen different variants. The GMC Sierra EV Denali Max Range is for the pickup fan with a taste for the best (and the means to gratify it).

This EV, built by union labor at GM’s Factory Zero, is what you might call a luxury pickup truck—it has the full range of utilitarian features you’d expect in a truck (and some new ones you might not have seen yet), along with most every amenity you’d want in a high-end luxury vehicle. This ride has more bells and whistles than a medium-size railroad.

What’s the diff between the GMC Sierra and the Chevrolet Silverado? Well, it’s complicated. Each of the two families has several variants in various price ranges, but in general the Sierras are more upscale models, and the Denali, like the namesake mountain (whose coordinates are engraved on the dashboard) is the top of the range. When it comes to the electric versions, the 2025 Silverado EV starts at $57,095, and the 2025 Sierra EV starts at $92,290. The loaded version I tested goes for $101,285.

If I listed all the features, amenities, goodies and doodads—ranging from the indispensable to the handy to the silly—of this state-of-the-art electric pickup, we’d be here all day, so I’ll just describe the ones that caught my attention.

The handiest feature of all is the Denali’s massive range. At full charge, she told me I had 490 miles to play with, and she wasn’t exaggerating. We took her on a two-day trip through the pine woods of the Florida Panhandle down to the sand dunes on the coast, and never felt a twinge of range anxiety. The guess-o-meter seemed pretty accurate, even when we punched it to highway speeds.

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I suspect the real rationale for such an over-the-top range spec is not to enable bladder-busting highway marathons, but rather to facilitate hauling and towing. Towing reduces range, and that fact has surely discouraged many an EV-curious truck buyer from going electric. The Denali can tow up to 10,000 lbs, and it sports a selection of towing-specific features. With 490 miles in hand, even if hauling your horsies were to cut your range in half, you’d still have as much range as the vast majority of EVs have out of the gate—quite sufficient for cruising the urban sprawls of America, or even for making a road trip with a reasonable number of charging stops.

We didn’t need to charge on the road at all, but of course I did anyway. The Denali supports Plug & Charge, but it failed to work for me (whether that was the fault of the car or the EV Connect charging station is impossible to say). After a couple of false starts (pretty much the norm at any public charger), she filled up just fine at 95 kW.

Daily Level 2 charging happens at 7.7 kW, or at 11.5 kW with the optional PowerUp package. An optional dual-level charging cord comes in very handy for travelling. (For some drivers, it might even eliminate the need for a hard-wired home charger.)

The optional GM Energy PowerShift Charger gives you 19.2 kW of Level 2 charging power, plus a truly revolutionary feature that’s just starting to appear on the newest EVs: bidirectional charging. The PowerShift Charger, when paired with the GM Energy V2H Enablement kit, adds Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) capability to the Denali’s bag of tricks, allowing it to power a home for short periods in case of a power outage.

There’s scads of space for stuff, from the bed to the crew cab to the roomy frunk to the passenger cabin. The center console is a warren of compartments, with movable cup holders and niches for all your paraphernalia.

Once you figure them out, the various screens (16.8-inch center touchscreen, instrument panel, heads-up display) give you more information than a starship captain could wish for. The current battery percentage and estimated range are in view at all times, and much more besides—the Denali even tells you what’s in the wireless phone charging bay (which is discreetly located under and behind the main screen) and what its state of charge is.

GM has got the memo that drivers don’t want to have to poke through menus for every little function, and this vehicle has a good balance between physical and virtual controls. There’s a big fat dedicated knob for the audio volume, and dedicated switches for climate control functions. Most of the normal vehicle functions are controlled by switches or stalks in the usual places.

The windshield rearview mirror has a sharp camera view, but can easily be switched to a plain old mirror just by flipping the switch. There’s a whole array of other views available for backing or parking—you can look behind you, above you (how do they do that?) or see close-ups of your tires.

Four-wheel steer is a handy feature that gives the Denali a much tighter turning radius than you’d expect for its size. Crab walk is a fun feature, though I didn’t find a practical use for it—if only I had had more time, I might have found that it’s handy for backing a trailer in a tight spot.

One of the things you’re paying for with a luxury model is more comfortable seats. A luxurious seat is necessarily bulky (and costly). It can’t be simulated in software. My wife Denise, who suffers from back pain, is a connoisseur of seating technology, and she found the seats in the Denali to be as comfy as she could wish. All the seat adjustments can be saved as one of three preset profiles.

Adding to the comfort, these seats are climate-controlled. Here in Florida, seat (and steering wheel) heaters are wonderful for a few days in the winter, but the seat coolers may be handy year-round. Cool air blows through tiny holes in the seat cushions, eliminating the dreaded soaked-shirt syndrome.

The model I drove had a fixed glass roof, which I suppose might be nice in cold climates, but in the Florida summer it seemed like a bad idea—too hot to touch, and definitely an added burden for the AC.

Yes, there’s plenty of power: 760 hp, 785 lb-ft of torque, and a 0-60 time of 4.5 seconds, enough go-go to shame most ICE trucks (and more than a few sports cars) off the line at a red light. (Sadly, I didn’t get to try the proverbial “passing a semi while going uphill towing a horse trailer” test this time.)

In both city and highway driving, I found the Denali’s ride to be very smooth and comfortable, but when I hit some rough road, there was just enough bounce to let me know I was in a truck. I’m no expert on suspension, but my friend Todd the Truck Man explained to me that that’s a necessary feature—if a truck were designed with a butter-smooth ride like a Cadillac, it wouldn’t handle well when carrying a load.

Of course, the driving feel is highly customizable, including the suspension, which can be adjusted to be “stiffer or more comfortable.” You can also set the responsiveness of the steering (Tour, Normal or Sport) and the acceleration (Relaxed, Normal or Adrenaline), and you can add a simulated motor sound if you like. There are three possible ride heights, and three levels of regen: One-Pedal Driving Off (no regen, coasts when you release the accelerator); Normal (moderate regen); and High (max regen). All these settings can be memorized as My Mode. There are also two preset modes: Off-Road and Towing (as well as several trailer-specific features, which can be memorized to accommodate different trailers).

Whenever I review a car, I find myself noticing little details that annoy, but I really can’t think of any here. On the contrary, there were lots of little details that I liked in spite of myself. I usually manage to complain about nav systems, which are often clunky and buggy. But this one worked fine, and here’s a nice touch: the heads-up display shows you not only the next turn, but the address you’re navigating to and the ETA. Modern vehicles tend to beep too much for my tastes, but in most cases, the Denali’s audio cues are unobtrusive—for example, when you use the key fob to lock the doors, there’s no beep, just a discreet click. (On the other hand, at one point, little brother started beeping when he felt I had left the turn signal on too long.)

In recent years, much has been written about the need for an electric pickup truck—some have opined that the acceptance of an electric truck will prove to be the tipping point for EV adoption in the US, as truck buyers are widely considered to be the most resistant to replacing gas with electrons. Where does this super-truck fit into the nascent market for e-pickups?

Well, I’d say you’re more likely to see the GMC Sierra EV Denali at a glamping site than at a job site. Not because there’s any lack of work-truck features—on the contrary, there are half a dozen AC power outlets that can deliver 10.2 kW of power for tools, and the pass-through feature and the six-function tailgate enable the Denali to handle a load of 12-foot 2x4s with ease, to say nothing of the extensive towing features. No, my concern is that this particular model seems like too nice a truck to be exposed to paint, cement, tobacco and sweat. But that’s okay—as noted above, GM has a wide range of electric pickups, so you could select a cheaper variant that you won’t worry so much about scratching up. But, then again…