Marques - an unabashed Tesla shill - is impressed by the Chevy Silverado EV.
Top three assets? Range, range and range.
Seriously. It seems that it’s truly an EV that’s a truck, as opposed to a truck with an electric drivetrain.
I am not impressed with the $100,000 starting price. Give me a 2WD option and cut that price in half, and we’re talking.
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$100k and no CarPlay/Android Auto.
Obviously Brownlee got the top-of-the-range to review, but $100k for a pickup truck is not out of whack for a top-of-the-range ICE pickup.
Also, the battery in that model is 200+kWh. They could halve that for a 2WD base model and be able to slash the price.
They only have one model, so that’s what it is. And it’s nearly double the price of a comparable 4WD ICE pickup. And all the Android/CarPlay/touchscreen garbage is a bug I would have to have to live with, not a feature. I would welcome an EV pickup, and I could somehow learn to tolerate all that technology, I suppose, but they’re just ridiculously prohibitively expensive at the moment. It’s not even close to being on the radar for consideration.
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Yep. I wasn’t suggesting the no CarPlay was a good thing; it’s idiotic on the part of GM.
FWIW, the ICE Silverado starts at $50k, but if you upgrade to the 4WD/luxury package, it’s $75k. Yes, $100k is expensive, but fuel cost will be a fraction and routine maintenance will be $0.
The initial high cost of EVs is a barrier to entry. But - not to get all Tesla - the cost of ownership is tiny by way of fuel and maintenance costs. This also means zero trips to the dealership for service and - for the vast, vast, vast majority of time - charging at home beats going to the gas station.
Of course, charging away from home currently sucks donkey dick, but if your need for a pick-up is to run to your deer lease every other weekend, then I’m sure you’ll quickly figure out a good plan to take advantage of charging stops for meal breaks etc. And charging infrastructure is going to get better sooner or later.
I enjoy CarPlay and after getting all the apps set up I never have to take my phone out of the glove compartment that it’s charging in. Way safer and I’ve grown to enjoy using voice recognition to send texts.
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If I ever bought a car again, no CarPlay would be a deal-breaker.
The entire infotainment system in a car is redundant. They should strip it all out and just support smartphone integration.
Not where I live. I can get a comparable crew cab 4WD Silverado Texas Edition with leather seats for about $55,0000. I’m not sure what you’re getting for an extra 50%. And that EV ain’t luxury. And again…I don’t want a 4WD crew cab pickup, I want a regular one.
At 20 mpg, even at $4/gallon, it would take 200,000 miles to break even on the extra $40,000 upfront costs (we’ll just say for the sake of discussion that the other maintenance costs like oil changes are about equivalent to the cost of electricity) That’s about 20 years of ownership, and not even factoring in the time value of money. I’m all for EVs, and I’d like to own one, but trying to convince me it’s some kind of a financial bargain just ain’t gonna work.
Perhaps you misunderstood my initial post. I’m not interested in CarPlay and would be willing to pay extra to NOT have it. Just not $40,000 extra.
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I just went on Chevy’s website and spec’d one out.
For the high-end EVs, the fuel cost is never going to trade off. But if you’re spending that much on an EV, the fuel cost probably isn’t a concern. For lower end EVs, especially the ones coming out purportedly to be priced in the mid-30s before tax credit, the fuel savings will definitely be a differentiator.
That’s for an absolute top of the line (which the EV is not) 3/4 ton with a 22,500-lb towing capacity, more than double the EV. The EV has a third less cargo capacity and less than half the towing capacity. Apples and chainsaws when it comes to pickup trucks. You need to compare the EV to a regular 1/2 ton, light duty pickup, which is where it sits on the market. It’s for guys like me, daily driver, occasional trip to Lowes, and tailgating, not towing yellow iron with a gooseneck trailer or a fifth wheel.
This is the issue. I’m in the market for a pickup, not an EV. If the pickup happens to be an EV, great, but that’s not the goal of buyers like me (and I think I’m pretty spot on for the average middle aged “full sized”, non-fleet/work pickup buyer).
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Yep. It’s going to be a while before people are buying EVs just coz, and not because they set out specifically to buy an EV.
I’m happy to buy an EV, even wanting to do so, and willing to pay a little extra. But I’m not looking to justify an EV when I’m in the market for a light duty pickup. They have to make ita reasonable tradeoff.
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This is exactly the conundrum not yet solved.
It’s pretty obvious that it’s the early-adopter grab-and-go so as to make as much money as they can before the technology is so widespread that profit margins will be razor thin.
That massive battery is impressive but what is even more impressive is the 350kW charging speed (which you need with a big battery like that). This is on par with the best (an newest) Porsches, Audi’s, etc… For example, people marvel at my 2022 Audi’s 270kW charging speed when I am at charging stations. You have to buy a 2025 Audi to get even faster 350kW charging. Chevy did a very good job there.
What’s going to be really interesting is how the states handle the demise of dealership networks. The current dealership model is unsustainable without the money-spinning service and maintenance work. Most states prohibit direct-to-consumer sales by manufacturers so if dealerships start closing down - or abandoning the sales role to be service centers only - something is going to have to give.
It will also be a bad day for the manufacturers of TruCoat.
Saturn had an interesting sales model. There were dealerships, of course, but prices were set by the manufacturer, and you paid the same no matter where you bought the vehicle. There were not dealer options or add ons, the dealers essentially functioned as a pickup center and a service center. It wasn’t a bad model, even if they were a shitbag of a company.
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That’s essentially how Tesla does it now (ironically, also a shitbag company - or at least a company run by a shitbag).
Personally, I find negotiating with a sales rep to be annoying and exhausting. Just tell me the fucking price and if it’s not to my liking I will buy something from someone else. That not being an option, I research the fuck out of my choices (I have some spectacular spreadsheets to prove it), identify the vehicle that I most want, and then pick a dealer that has one.
The trouble is that, as soon as I walk onto the lot, they know that I want what they’ve got, so I’m dead meat. Yes you can haggle about this and that but, in reality, it’s just squeezing a balloon because whatever they give you here they take somewhere else.
I once negotiated a car lease over phone/fax and it made me want to nuke the fucking dealership from orbit. I would agree with the salesman all the parameters that drove the payment structure and have him fax me the agreement. Each time, the agreement would come through with one of the parameters having been changed (the balloon analogy from above). Each time I would get back on the phone, explain what needed to be corrected and would receive a fax with the one thing corrected and something else changed. This went on for about a week.
There is no reason why buying a new product has to be this way. It probably made sense to have dealers in the mix…in the 1950s…but it is anti-competitive protectionist bullshit in this century. EOR.
I test drove a Saturn once long ago (didn’t buy it). The first thing the guy showing me the car did was kick the door as hard as he could to show it wouldn’t dent. It was actually kind of impressive as I remember it to this day.