Digging Into the Chevy Silverado EV with the Chief Engineer - Talking Power, Charging, Size & More

Hey folks and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. Now electric pickup trucks are coming. We know it's happening. Ford has already revealed that F-150 Lightning and we just got our first glimpse at the Silverado EV from Chevrolet. And we need to talk about these things because there's so much to dig into. So in this video we actually got to sit down with the chief engineer of that Silverado EV to pick her brain on how this new all-electric truck is going to work. Well obviously you guys started off the year with the big bang. You know you made the biggest splash coming out of the gate which is really exciting especially for us. You know we focus on trucks so we love truck stuff. So let's just start it off if you don't mind with just a general overview. What were you trying to achieve with Silverado EV and you know do you think you got there? Sure. We started out with an all-new architecture. So I think really being able to have a new architecture using our Altium platform for our batteries really allowed us to redesign and reimagine the pickup truck features, functions, cargo flexibility and having it be an all-new ground-up vehicle allowed us to really even recompartmentalize the truck bed, the cab, the forward dash forward areas to really provide customers with a unique experience. We definitely chose not to take our current Silverado body-on-frame pickup truck and just put batteries underneath it for two big reasons. The first reason is that we wouldn't have been able to achieve 400 miles of range without being able to take advantage of our Altium architecture and make that become sort of the Lego let's just say base backbone of the vehicle and get those 400 miles. And then the second reason was really EVs offer a lot more opportunity to the customers by having you know no exhaust going through the underbody you know under the underbody so you don't have a transmission hump and parts to deal with underneath the truck. So you can have a flat floor. You can you know move wheel bases and move the compartments around and you don't have an engine to deal with in the front so you can even scooch the front passengers forward a little bit and still have great performance and dynamics but offer more capability in the EV pickup than an ICE. So we really truly sat down and said how will we re-imagine? How will we provide more value, more performance, more capability to our customers with this being an all-new approach? And to answer your second question we nailed it. We did everything that we wanted to do. The team set out with a very clear vision of 400 miles of range and flexible cargo and storage for our customers and the team did some amazing things. There were lots of challenges to our midgate and to packaging. Lots of things inside of this pickup truck. It's packed with features and and we need to you know make technology and features relevant as well and so I'm just ecstatic to be able to talk publicly about all the work that my team has done. Very cool. So you know what building off that you mentioned the range and I still think probably range is the number one question people have but then number two for me is charge times and I know you guys worked on making sure this thing charged quickly so can you just talk us through how quickly the Silverado EV can charge? Yeah I mean for sure range anxiety is something that's on the forefront of everyone's minds. We have early adopters for EVs and then as we start to approach 350, 400 plus miles of range it really allows people to imagine more than just a daily drive but actually starting to take their vehicle on trips and doing other things with it. So we are excited to be able to offer I think it's probably the fastest charge in the EV space so far at 350 kilowatts of DC fast charge. That allows us to charge the vehicle 100 miles in 10 minutes so the stops that you would make to get your vehicle charged and on its way to other locations is really something that we're trying to minimize. I mean we know that's a pain point for EV customers that we need to you know overcome and we're really excited to be able to offer that 100 miles in 10 minutes. Okay and just because I honestly don't know is DC fast charging something I can get it at my house if I want it or not? I don't know I can't give you the technical answer I would be guessing. What I will say to you is that there is fast charging available at your home depending on what you electrically decide to set up with and there are various levels of DC fast charge there can be so it's all about AC versus DC and so 150 kilowatts can still be fast charging because you're getting direct current and you're not going through and splitting to 120 volts so the short answer is likely yes you have to have it available in your area you can do fast charging but you know the technical answer for that I'd ask that we get back to you guys on just so that we're being very accurate in our response. Okay yeah fair and then the other big one for me is you know the 20,000 pound tow rating that was announced which I know is not happening today but it's going to eventually come out you know I guess I would love to know first of all how you technically achieved it I'm not sure if you can talk about that but then second of all why was that something you thought was important to get such a high tow rating out of this truck? Yeah paying no attention to what's happening behind the curtain we can't tell you all of the things that we're doing what I think the 20,000 pound towing capability provides though is we've talked a lot about this is a capable full-size truck it is owning up to and has to live up to its Silverado name we put the name Silverado Silverado on it so it means that it's capable it's quality it's durable it can go on and off road you know there needs to be an understanding of our customer base that we know full-size trucks we know what they should be capable of and we're designing that into the vehicle. When we talk about 20,000 pounds a little bit of that then is why not if we're capable of doing it the motors the batteries the architecture why not offer that to our customers again going back to that flexibility of cargo and that flexibility of storage cargo is not just about what's in your vehicle it's also about in trucks what you can tow so the architecture is extremely exciting to work on it's capable and it's amazing we are offering 20,000 pounds because we think customers want that and they want to be able to tow that kind of load and frankly I think it also offers folks that are on the fence about EVs and whether they're really capable of being full-size trucks the opportunity to understand that yes full-size trucks can be capable of this with the EV architecture rather than with an ICE architecture. That brings up for me anyway a couple questions. I've seen photos and I see in the photos an eight lug wheel front and rear which indicates a much heavier axle than what we would normally find in what we colloquially call a half-ton. With this truck are we blurring the lines between say 1,500, 2,500, 3,500 are we going to come up with a new evaluation of what this truck is as opposed to the standard? I'll answer your question slightly differently because I want to stay away from the 1,500, 2,500 answer because it's something that's in people's minds and they just think light duty, medium duty, heavy duty you know that kind of thing. What I think is true in the EV segment is a couple of things. We're not a body on frame and we're not a body frame integral architecture. We have clearly created a new type of architecture that integrates a battery pack that has a lot of the structure integrated into the battery pack that also provides structure to the vehicle and then we attach the body onto it but it's not with body mounts traditionally that you would think of in a body on frame vehicle. That being said when we talk about the mass of the vehicle we know that the battery technology is evolving and that to get 400 miles of range we use 24 modules in our battery packs and that as the cell chemistry becomes more efficient the mass of those battery packs becomes less and we can still get the same range. So we are blurring the lines in terms of trying to define exactly what this pickup truck is and going more focused on capability rather than then stating it as a body on frame, stating it as a 1500 because of the fact that it doesn't matter to the large picture of what the customer will get. The ride dynamics of the vehicle are amazing. The center of gravity is lower in this truck because of the battery pack. The structural feel is very solid so your experience in an EV is just that much better from a ride and handling perspective and so the EVs allowed us to redefine the market and that's really what you're seeing with 1500 versus 2500 with body on frame versus BFI. All of those things are really letting us innovate and create a new category for vehicles and I think this is just a super exciting time to be in the transportation industry, the automotive industry and be able to have the opportunity to say listen we've just redefined what we do in terms of engineering and design and everyone should be excited and not concerned that it's not you know is it a 1500, is it a 2500, is it a BFI, is it a BOF, don't worry it's amazing it does what it's supposed to do and it's all the things you're used to and more. You know and to your point, you as a manufacturer, us as media, what we're struggling with right now is to deliver this message without any historical references you know and because that's exactly the issue when you when you launch something new is that you can't say to somebody well it's like a so-and-so or you know it's like what you already had it's just that this is different, no because if we're not going with traditional labels then yeah the first thing we have to do is go to the customer and say we need you to put that out of your mind at the same time though we're going to have to offer them something in place of that so they can kind of start getting used to that because you know we got 120 years of gas technology which people have absorbed generation after generation literally by osmosis whereas now we're looking at a whole new thing and it's really weird because everybody knows what electricity is, people know what electric motor is but they don't really understand the details and they don't understand the interfaces and so much so that even you know today I'm sitting here and I'm going okay one of my questions is my next question that's my lead-up is when I buy a traditional gas-powered pickup truck I don't really think too much past the 15-year range in terms of what I'm going to get out of that truck I know that I'm going to get 10 fairly good years I'm going to get five bad years and then I'm pretty much at zero in terms of my value and that's been going on since forever actually it's gotten better over the decades now. When I look at an electric truck I guess my first question to you and we can be very kind of you know generic about this is how long does an electric motor last? I don't think I have the right answer for you I actually was just asked this for the first time yesterday I'll give you a couple of perspectives and then we can probably get some of our propulsion team to follow up with you guys on sort of their answer. I'll say a couple of things we are a large-scale manufacturer at General Motors and several others in the EV space are there are some startups but you know there are others coming that have a large-scale background we know the quality and the performance that our customers expect and we're not expecting our customers to have to trade off their expectations when we go to an EV space. So in terms of motors you can expect to see similar warranty, similar testing, similar quality that you would see in a traditional ice propulsion system we would be validating to those same level of standards because we stand behind our products and we stand behind the warranty. So I don't think I think folks like you helping us carry messages forward that say you know in your in your background in terms of you know this is something different what does it mean helping everyone understand that it doesn't mean you're trading things off it means it's a new adventure but you should still be able to rely on your vehicle and have that reliability and durability be true in the future. In terms of exactly what you know we're saying in terms of quality and durability I would need to get from the propulsion team and from our comms team so we'll help you with that part of the answer but you know we stand behind the vehicles and we're engineering the trucks to be a similar level of performance and more and better. I have a 2002 Silverado also in my family and my daughter drives it now we will drive in Michigan so you can only imagine how much fun she's had in the winters. And you know we've evolved in our quality over the years as everyone else has we are always striving to have more quality and durability out of our vehicles and we're not stopping we're certainly advancing and that technology as well in our EV vehicle so you can come to expect some things that are also getting improved that don't have anything to do with being an EV but that we want to continue to improve our durability and performance with. Yeah you know and and you've said it well and again this is where I can see that us again as media are going to try and offer people some rule of thumbs if you will as we go along. You have a good sense of of how long your battery pack is going to last and you know I know just in general I mean you know electric motors are simple things compared to a gasoline engine my god you know they're much less parts and pieces right of course that really helps. So realistically I mean as much as we always say if you do your maintenance there's no reason why something won't last literally forever and you know what it's a whole different viewpoint when somebody purchases say this truck if they can say well you know what I'm going to get you know even if I replace the battery pack I'm going to get 20-25 years out you know if if we get to a point where that becomes sort of the everybody knows that information right I mean frankly that's the kind of stuff I'm fascinated with technology but I know that every time somebody sees this truck they see the price point they're going holy crap and the only way to mitigate the holy crap moment is to say yeah but you're going to get this much life and frankly this is just me talking to your marketing people through you I think we need to hear more stories about that I think so that we can we can help people start to imagine what this new you know what this new age is going to be about. Yeah a couple of comments I think that's a completely fair perspective. First thing that we're trying to do is talk to folks about technology we're putting into the vehicle like Altify where you purchase your vehicle and then post-purchase the vehicle is upgradable in the future not just with OTA as a lot of people are now hearing over the air updates for software improvements and things like that but also personalizing your experience downloading applications I mean I don't want to I don't want to assume that what we have today is the best we can ever do that's not even true so why not make the vehicle capable of downloading an app that we can't even like conceive of right now but that in two years our engineers have come up with some great innovation that you can download to your vehicle so some of this that we're doing is to respond to that and we're talking about Altify and its flexibility and its capability to allow you to upgrade your vehicle over time post-purchase I think that's really important for customers kind of to your first point the second thing that I think is also important about just in general the EV space today you know everyone's out there trying to be competitive in their battery technology right we all know that the cells the makeup the the materials that are being used inside of it are a large part of who's going to be successful and who might be less successful in the long run and so what EV potential buyers need to understand is this is really no different than when you know diesel started coming into the U.S. and some other technology with you know direct injection engines and seeing things like that started to come true the technology grows and the improvements come with that technological growth and so it's no different than how the gasoline engine has evolved in the last 100 years 120 years we've made them more efficient we've made them more durable we've made them perform better that is going to happen in the EV space and so we have teams that are fully focused on two generations from now cell chemistry cell technology cell capability so that we can offer even more durability even more efficiency out of EVs it's no different than the technology and advancements that we've been doing in gasoline and diesel engines and it's something that GM because of our manufacturing and our scale we're one of the few manufacturers who can actually go do that research that development and continue to try to grow this space and improve it and I'm very excited there's a lot of great very smart people that are not me working in the propulsion area in our battery technology development who have some awesome ideas of how to just continue to make that be less of a story less of a concern in people's minds and I think as the technology grows as the volume in this market grows so too will the comfort of the customer base with what we're offering no those are great insights particularly because and this is something that we're saying um EV is not something that we're dabbling with it's not something that we're looking at it's here it's arrived it's full on it's where we're going and you know people need to find that comfort with it so that they can uh so they can make that make that transition I mean if you look at our if you look at our strategy just with our launch strategy we're launching our fleet model first which is an unusual strategy for a manufacturer and that really signals to the world that we are serious about our sustainable future and that we want to partner with companies to enable their sustainable future as well I mean if you think about EV acceptance it's not just about your daily drive but it's about seeing other things around you so if you see that electric company coming in to service a pole or service a meter or service a facility around you and you see that it's an EV truck you gain some acceptance you start to see that this is real so there's definitely a strategy a wholesome strategy um across General Motors about how we attain that sustainable future that Mary has been talking about and so there are strategies in place that I think are really smart and they're really um they're there to support that sustainability future and get us to a zero emissions future that's our goal we're very committed to it and so you're going to see some things that are different than than the norm that other OEMs are doing and we're going to come out with things like a fleet first product yeah I mean I think it's definitely more compelling at the fleet end and at the you know the forty thousand dollar price range definitely makes it sound um I have one last question and this is straight up just pulled out of our YouTube comments when we put out our first video I think the most thing the thing that people talk about the most 24 inch wheels on the RST can you just tell us why um the RST brand model I'll say is very much a urban feel uh street type model and why not 24 inch wheels and tires is kind of how I'll turn it to you that is how our team thinks um there are alternatives that will be available um the work truck has 18 inch wheels and tires so you can imagine there you know we we don't stand still ever we always have our customers in mind when we think about you know wheels and tires and other things that we offer so I can't specifically comment but what I will say is it looks great on the truck it works with the aerodynamics and it offers um some athleticism to the already great uh design of the truck exterior of the truck and so um if that's not for you you're going to find something that is for you really quickly after so I you know that's not a concern of mine in terms of we are thinking customer but I think it's a great opportunity to provide um a different type of look and feel to that pickup truck and still know that even with 24 inch wheels and tires it's capable of everything that a pickup's capable of and and and so we're innovating and we're we're stretching the boundaries and pushing um you know different opportunities for our customers and I think we've got something that um everyone is going to uh appreciate and there'll be a truck for everyone as we start to to roll out you know what the rest of the Silverado EVs look like and you saw that a little bit in Mary's CES um reveal with the Trail Boss. We're showing our capability off in the architecture but I think those 24 inch wheels and tires um really call the design overall and aesthetics of that full-size pickup truck um to something really great. Well it got a lot of attention for better or for worse everybody was talking about the wheels um yeah I mean I think that's it for me too I think I just a general statement I'm so excited just for yeah all these all-electric trucks coming online and for you know the the different takes that all the different manufacturers have on it it's uh yeah like you said we're entering a new age and like dad said and it's exciting from your side and from our side yeah there's no doubt we're we're we're looking forward to you know following this evolution a lot of people say I was there at the birth of the Model T however um I'm looking forward to being able to follow this along for a while so it's uh it's going to be very cool and particularly once we like I said once we get people comfortable with the idea then I can really see sky's the limit in terms of variations and and different uh technologies that'll come and I love to hear the fact that you're already thinking about you know upgradable technology in the vehicle that I already own that's a that's a that's a big one right so yeah I mean we don't we don't ever stop innovating even as we're developing this first year truck we're still innovating we're not done when we talk about that reveal truck we say this is like you know this is the show vehicle it's not our final answer because we are continually trying to improve it you know we've got a year to do a lot of great work and the team is super smart and working on little innovations as we go that'll just please the customers and give them that much more capability so I think it's really exciting I'm really glad that you guys are um talking about these things and helping customers understand what EVs are about and anytime I can sit and talk to you guys would be a great time awesome well we really appreciate it Nicole thank you very much have a good day okay thanks guys so we want to say thanks to Chevrolet for making the chief engineer available to us she certainly had a lot of interesting things to say but I got to tell you Steve my one big takeaway from this is that with these new EV trucks we've got to rethink how we designate pickup trucks you know we've had a century of talking about half ton three quarter one ton 1500 series 2500 series these new trucks are not going to fall into those designations not when she's talking about potentially towing 20,000 pounds with this truck so it doesn't follow the old formulas this is stuff that we're going to need to get used to it's going to make it very interesting yeah and I mean that applies to a lot of things packaging for instance there's no engine up front so you have all this new space to work with and all these companies are coming up with different ways of kind of putting these trucks together so you can store more stuff in them I think the general consensus is yeah we have to rethink how we think about pickup trucks because they are definitely changing in my opinion for the better but hey now we want to hear from you so why don't you go in the comments let us know what you think about this Silverado EV and electric trucks in general and then hey while you're down there don't forget to hit like hit the subscribe button hit the join button to become a member and then come right back here to truck king to see what we're testing next