General Motors seems to be the king of tease lately, doling out information on its upcoming electric trucks in sound bites. A day after the GMC Hummer EV SUV reveal with few details, GM pushed out another release full of no information, this time on the Silverado EV.
Frankly, the 123-word press release raised more questions than it answers. However, here are the four things we know for sure.
Silverado EV will be built at Factory Zero
We already knew that the Hummer EVs would be built at Factory Zero, formerly known as the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant. Now GM confirms that the Silverado EV will be built there as well.
This is just one of three GM plants that will be building EVs. The Spring Hill, Tennessee, plant will be building the Cadillac Lyriq, and the Orion Assembly, builds the Chevrolet Bolt EVs.
It will be built on the same platform as the Hummer EV
In its sparsely worded release, GM also confirmed it would use the same Ultium Platform seen in the GMC Hummer EV SUV and SUT. What it didn’t explicitly say but definitely implied: The Silverado EV will likely not share parts with the gasoline model – or at least not many parts. What it did say is that this would be designed from the ground up as an EV.
Range is estimated to be 400 miles
Probably the biggest tease is that the range of the Silverado EV will top 400 miles on a full charge. Of course, there are caveats galore in GM’s photo caption (above), stating actual range may vary based on temperature, terrain, battery age, loading, how you use and maintain your vehicle and if you opted to eat that extra slice of pizza before driving. OK, maybe we threw that last one in to see if you were paying attention, but GM may as well have said something similar with all its exceptions.
The interesting thing about this GM-estimated range, however, is it bests the 350-mile range of the GMC Hummer EV SUT. This tells us two things. First, the Silverado EV will likely get a top-tier trim with three motors. Second, the Silverado EV will most certainly be smaller and lighter than the Hummer EV SUT.
There will be a fleet version
Again, we have no details on this statement other than it’s happening. But GM, in all its brevity, said there would be “a variety of options.” So, we take that to mean there will be a work truck as well as a high-end “lifestyle” truck, and we anticipate it will follow the same formula as the Hummer EV with everything from one-motor options, to the higher-end three-motor options.
Thus, it is highly likely the 400-mile range will be a trim topper, and we’ll likely see something in the 250 range for the more basic trucks.
And pricing? We have no clue.
Will it be called the Chevrolet Silverado E?
As we were prepping the image for this story, we noticed one more thing that the press release didn’t say: The photo title when downloaded is Chevrolet-Silverado-E-Teaser.jpg. That along with the teaser video that highlights the blue “E” in the middle of Silverado makes us wonder if the actual name of the electric truck will be Silverado E, not Silverado EV.
The bottom line on Silverado EV
Ford announced an EV version of the F-150 way back in September of 2020 – and it gave quite a few more details than a 123-word press release. Because Ford is shooting to have that truck hit the market in mid-2022, we assume the Silverado EV will launch around that time as well – or shortly thereafter.
Interestingly, that means it would drop right around the time of the top-tier 3X trim of the Hummer EV SUT.
At any rate, this article is now four times longer than the actual information we were given, so we’ll sign off with a stay tuned for more details – coming (hopefully) soon.
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