The Chevrolet Silverado EV Will Apparently Not Have a $40K Base Price
Our corporate colleagues at AutoGuide have scanned the Chevrolet Silverado EV first drives and noticed something -- the truck is almost certainly not going to have the previously promised price of $39,900 before destination fees.
It looks like the first units for sale will be the $79,800 4WT trim -- these trucks are meant for fleet sales. The $74,000 3WT trim is soon to follow, and AG speculates that the lower trims won't come in at less than $60K.
We shall see, but we can't say we're surprised, given the popularity of trucks -- and how that drives up pricing (I priced a mid-trim Silverado for funsies this morning and it came out to over $65,000) -- and the cost of building these EV trucks.
Cheap EV trucks will likely be on the market someday. Today, it appears, is not that day.
[Image: Chevrolet]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Over the last few days I've watched a couple of very enlightening interviews on Autoline After Hours' YouTube channel, both focused on EVs, conducted by John McElroy and Gary Vasilash. I would encourage both EV enthusiasts and skeptics to watch them. They're both about an hour long and go into great detail.
The first one, "The Tesla Revolution: Legacy OEMs Under Enormous Pressure to Change" is an interview with a couple of guys with Caresoft, a company that CT scans vehicles, and tears them down for benchmarking purposes. Lots of great insight on Tesla's approach to EV design and manufacturing, versus the legacy carmakers.
The Tesla Revolution: Legacy OEMs Under Enormous Pressure to Change - Autoline After Hours 653
The second one, "Free EV Charging Is Making It Miserable For Everyone" is an interview with Brent Gruber with J.D. Power, and Tom Moloughney of State of Charge, on the current state of the EV industry, sales numbers, and the state of the public charging infrastructure. It turns out that three years of unlimited free charging by VW, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, and others is the worst thing for public charging availability, since people with free unlimited charging are tying up the DC fast chargers just because they can.
Free EV Charging Is Making It Miserable For Everyone - Autoline After Hours 652
"Work trucks" that cost $74-$80k? Uh, nope.
What, and people are surprised? I'm certainly not; I expected it. That "starting price" of $79K is 50% higher than the first house I was looking to buy only 20 years ago! (Didn't buy it though... despite its favorable location. Wife wanted something with bigger rooms and ended up with less square footage as a result...albeit much newer and more expensive.)
With competition this lame, Tesla might have a winner with the Cyber Truck.