It really annoys me, because I was raised on what tribalists would call “a GM household”, but I have to admit that the Silverado EV that was released to the public on CES is not going to work tremendously well and probably be crushed by the F150 lightning. And it all boils down to the midgate.
It seems that GM ran headfirst into a wall with their EVs recently. The Bolt, their EV for the masses, decided that it was going to spontaneously combust. And when GM recalled them the replacements also decided they would maybe prefer to release their energy without being asked to. Nevertheless, GM is soldiering on, with their flagship Hummer SUV beginning deliveries and announcing the release of the all-new Silverado RST, with bonus midgate.
Ah, yes, the midgate. The idea that someone in GM seems to like about as much as Jon Peters likes giant spiders. Twenty years ago, GM was extremely confident in it and dropped it on the new Chevrolet Avalanche, essentially a Silverado with a unified bed (Tahoe with a chopped roof?). It also made it to the Hummer H2 and Cadillac Escalade as the H2 SUT and the Escalade EXT, respectively. The latter of those two being white-hot tickets on the early 2000s. Nevertheless, their success was limited in relationship to their parent vehicles. It seems like people who wanted to carry things would prefer a conventional Silverado and just manage the larger dimensions of the vehicle in relation to its cargo bed. As a personal note, I don’t think many owners were particularly excited about having to handle their rear glass every time they wanted to haul something long.
This is before you get to the myriad issues of the midgate leaking. GM does say they eventually fixed it, but a 2014 bulletin (1 year after the Avalanche and the EXT ceased production, the SUT died with Hummer) doesn’t strike me with much confidence. And on top of all this, if you use your truck as a truck and damage the bed, fixing it will be a little bit more involved than what you would expect out of a conventional bed, even with modern pickup beds being compartmentalized feats of engineering far more complex than the plain hollow rectangles of yesteryear.
And I know, nobody is going to use their Silverado RST for actual work, anymore than first-time owners of a Lexus GX would go trailing in it, however, GM also released this, the WT version for actual use on work sites, and that one will get scuffed, scratched and dented. GM even flaunted its up to 20,000 lbs. tow rating, unsurprisingly without any word regarding how this would affect the 400 mile range.
In light of these against the Ford F150, I don’t think that Ford has much to worry about on the Electric field and maintaining their dominance through the transition to electric vehicles. Then again, we do still have one silent player on this, the 2024 Ram Electric. Stellantis, now owner of a smorgasboard of brands, has promised it will let the people see it soon. It will probably be a more traditional, and yet very competitive offering, so long as you can accept a Fiat-Chrysler vehicle where all of it is the electrics.
