Chevy upgrades Silverado EV electric pickup to 450 miles of range
GM announced that the Chevrolet Silverado EV WT electric pickup will have 450 miles of range on a single charge – significantly higher than expected.
It is still planned for this spring.
While GM is a bit late on its rival Ford in the pickup market with an electric option, it might be worth the wait.
When the automaker first announced the Silverado EV last year, GM said that it estimated the top range to be about 400 miles for Silverado EV Work Truck (WT), which is going to be the first version available and for fleets.
Today, GM updated the Silverado EV Work Truck’s range with an EPA-estimated range of 450 miles:
Chevrolet has some electrifyingly good news to share today! The Silverado EV Work Truck’s EPA-estimated range is in: 450 miles on a full charge. With this official estimate, the Silverado EV WT is expected to offer over 100 miles more than its closest on-sale competitor.
It’s indeed much more than the Ford Lightning’s 320 miles of range with an Extended Battery pack and 328 miles for the Rivian R1T with the highest range configuration.
GM commented on the higher than expected range:
Our engineering team long targeted at least 400 miles of range, but they were able to go above and beyond to achieve this increase. Over the past several months, extensive development and testing unlocked the increased 450-mile range. This figure, paired with the ability to charge at 350 kW, makes the Silverado EV WT the choice electric pickup to serve fleet buyers’ needs. After all, this truck wears a Silverado badge – it’s made for tough jobs.
The automaker also added that while the 450-mile version will be the first available, the Silverado EV WT will also have a smaller battery pack option with a “GM-estimated 350 miles of range on a full charge” that will come “soon after launch.”
In the release about the range increase, GM claims to still be “on track to launch in the spring of 2023.”
The first edition is expected to feature 510 horsepower, 615 lb-ft of torque, 1,200 lb. of payload capacity, and 8,000 lb. of towing capacity. That towing capacity is a bit limited, but GM says that a Max Towing Package will upgrade the capacity to up to 20,000 lb. in 2025.
Electrek’s Take
450 miles of EPA-rated range on a single charge is extremely impressive for an electric pickup truck.
It puts GM in the lead on that front in the rapidly growing electric pickup market.
It will be interesting to see how it translates into towing range, which has been an issue for the existing pickup trucks limited to ~300 miles of range without towing. You can easily halve that with any kind of significant weight being towed.
Even by halving the range of the Silverado EV, at 450 miles, you still get a decent range of 225 miles.
It’s starting to feel like the Silverado EV is going to shake up the electric pickup space.
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Paris’ bike-share system, Vélib has long been considered one of the shining success stories of urban micromobility. With a massive fleet of over 20,000 pedal and electric-assist bicycles around Paris, the service has helped millions of residents and tourists get around the City of Light without needing a car or scooter. But lately, a growing problem is threatening to knock the wheels off this urban mobility marvel: theft and joyriding.
According to city officials and the service operator, more than 600 Vélib bikes are now going missing every single week. That’s over 30 bikes a day simply vanishing from the system – some stolen outright, others taken on “joy rides” and never returned.
“At the moment we’re missing 3,000 bikes,” explained Sylvain Raifaud, head of the Agemob company that currently operates the Velib system. That’s nearly 15% of over 20,000 Vélib bikes across Paris.
The sticky-fingered culprits aren’t necessarily professional thieves or organized crime rings. Instead, they’re often regular users who treat the shared bikes like disposable toys.
The city estimates that many people have figured out how to pry the bikes out of the system’s parking docks, unlocking one for a casual cruise and then ditching it somewhere far from a docking station.
Once pried free, the bikes are technically usable for the next 24 hours until their automatic locking feature kicks in. At that point, the bikes are often simply abandoned. Some end up in alleyways. Others get tossed in rivers. A few just disappear completely.
And since the bikes are intended to be parked at their many docking stations around the city, they don’t have GPS chips, further complicating recovery of “liberated” bikes.
The issue started small but has grown into more than an inconvenience – it’s beginning to undermine the entire purpose of the service. With bikes going missing at such a high rate, many Vélib docking stations are left empty, especially during rush hours.
Riders looking for a quick commute or a convenient hop across town are increasingly finding themselves without available bikes, or having to walk long distances to find a functioning one.
That kind of unreliability chips away at user confidence and threatens to drive potential riders back into cars, cabs, or other less sustainable forms of transport at a time when Paris has already made great strides to dramatically reduce car usage in the city.
The losses are financially painful, too. Replacing stolen or vandalized bikes isn’t cheap, and the resources spent on tracking down missing equipment or reinforcing anti-theft measures are stretching thin. Vélib has faced theft and vandalism issues before, especially during its early years, but this latest surge has officials sounding the alarm with renewed urgency.
Officials acknowledge that there’s no easy fix. Paris, like many cities with bike-share systems, walks a fine line between accessibility and accountability. Part of what makes Vélib so successful is its ease of use and widespread availability. But those same features make it vulnerable to misuse – especially when enforcement is limited and the consequences for abuse are minimal.
The timing of the problem is especially unfortunate. In recent years, Paris has seen impressive results in reducing car traffic, expanding bike lanes, and promoting cycling as a key part of its sustainable transport strategy. Vélib is a cornerstone of that plan. But if the system becomes too unreliable, it risks losing the very people it was designed to serve.
Meanwhile, as Parisians increasingly find themselves staring at empty docks, the challenge for the city and Vélib will be to restore confidence in the system without making it harder to use. That means striking the right balance between freedom and responsibility, between open access and protection against abuse.
In a city where cycling is supposed to be the future of mobility, losing thousands of bikes to joyriders and sticky fingers isn’t just frustrating; it’s unsustainable.
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