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There’s a lot to go over with Chevy’s Silverado EV, but what makes it really unique is the huge 200+kWh battery and the 450+ mile range that it provides. But that monster battery also has a few well disguised drawbacks, including putting the truck at a whopping 8500 lbs. Let’s dive in…

Chevy flew us out to Ann Arbor to learn about the Silverado EV work truck and then off to a local farm to see the Silverado in its native habitat, complete with country music and BBQ. There we got to tow a 10,000 lb. John Deere tractor, head out on some dirt roads, and drive the Silverado through some small towns with even smaller parking spots.

Then we got to speak to some of the experts on Chevy’s team about the nuances of this vehicle. There is a ton going on here, but by far the biggest differentiator between this vehicle and the competition is the huge battery and the subsequent 450+ miles of range. I use the ‘+’ because throughout most of the testing, I was seeing greater than 450 miles of range sometimes close to 500 miles in very normal around town usage, similar to what a fleet work truck would do in a typical day; obviously when towing, that range gets cut as much as in half. But when starting out so high, all of a sudden towing long distances becomes way less stressful.

The downside of that huge battery is the weight and size. The driving dynamics were super impressive however, even on dirt roads. Chevy recommends a surprisingly high 61 PSI on the wheels and ours were showing 63 PSIs, yet the ride was incredibly smooth. Still, however, you are schlepping around a 200kWh battery everywhere which consumes a lot of extra energy and the inertia of a 8500 lb. vehicle becomes all that much more dangerous in an accident.

Silverado EV has 50% more battery than F-150 Lightning or Rivian R1T

There’s no denying the standout feature of the Silverado Work Truck is its huge, honking 200+kWh battery. To put it into perspective, it is 50% bigger than Ford’s F-150 Lightning long range battery at 131kWh and double the under 100kWh standard range battery. That’s an extra vehicle battery on top of an F-150 Lightning battery (Chevy’s Bolt is 65kWh for instance). Rivian clocks in slightly higher at 135kWh but that’s a rounding error, and its upcoming Max battery pack still falls significantly short at 180kWh.

Ford vs Chevy vs Rivian

That incredible Silverado 450 mile range isn’t just from battery alone however. It has the same size battery as the GMC Hummer EV which has a 329 mile range.

Curiously, Chevy was super-coy about the battery size and kept saying it was different than the Hummer EVs though they did concede it as the same module and kWh spec.

How did Chevy eek out a whopping 121 miles from the same size battery?

Well first of all, the Hummer EV isn’t an exercise in efficiency. Its huge tires, gaping drag coefficient, removable roof and absurd 10,000 lb. weight make a lot of low hanging fruit when optimizing.

But Silverado also has smaller, more efficient (and one fewer) motors. So this isn’t a speed burner with a mid-5 second 0-60 but will be fine for just about anyone. When towing 10,000 lbs., however, I had an 11+ second 0-60 time which might be troublesome for getting on highways, especially uphill.

The aerodynamics aren’t just good but they made “one of the most efficient trucks ever” with a .331 drag coefficient. Rivian claims a lower flat, .3, but both are great aero trucks.

Silverado EV Work Truck also drops almost a literal ton of weight from the Hummer EV with some simplicity which also helps with cost savings. Also we saw up to 180kW of regeneration power when using the 1 pedal driving mode and even higher with a trailer attached. That adds up.

Chevy Pro Power on Board Offboard power

The power system for these EV trucks still fascinates me even if we’ve mostly “seen this before.”

Chevy basically replicated Ford’s extremely popular power station on board. It is a similar amount of power 10kW in similar places – Rear bed, Interior, charging port and Frunk (Chevy calls it the E-Trunk but even the experts, see above, were calling it a “frunk”).

Overall you get 10.2kW of power including a 30A, 7.2kW generator plug output that can manually backup your home at launch. Chevy is working on something similar to Ford’s automatic home backup through the charging port and expects to have something that will coincide with the launch of the RST at the end of this year.

For the moment, however, Chevy does have some cool charge port accessories like the 6kW charger cable that will charge another vehicle (one would assume you could also charge a vehicle using the 7.2kW generator port with an adapter). It also has some neat add-ons like charging port powerstrips with different charging options including the RV favorite NEMA TT-30 30A 110V plug.

To show its prowess, Chevy ran the two food trucks from its off board power, without breaking a sweat and barely registering on battery usage. This truck has enough power to run multiple food trucks for days while subtracting the traditional loud running, petroleum spewing power generation which isn’t a great pairing with food preparation and consumption.

Silverado EV pricing

Let’s start with the bad news: To everyone’s shock and surprise (/s), Chevy will not be selling a Silverado EV starting under $40,000 like they originally planned. I’m not sure how many of the 185,000 reservation holders were banking on that but with a few years of inflation, parts shortages, delays, etc, here we are. I do think that they will get into the $50+K range starting next year when they offer a significantly lower range model Work Truck. After incentives that will get close to $40K. Chevy says range and price will be competitive with Ford’s standard offerings which currently start at 230 miles/100kWh and $55K.

The 450-mile work truck we drove will start at $77,905 and be available to fleets in the coming weeks. That’s notably a few weeks later than Chevy’s planned “spring rollout,” but compared to the years of delays Tesla has shown on its models like Cybertruck, it is just a blip. Meanwhile the slightly smaller battery 350+ mile Work Truck will debut at the end of the year with a $72,905 price tag.

Chevy Silverado RST First Edition

Also at the end of the year, Chevy will unleash the RST First Edition for a whopping $105K which is getting pretty close to a Hummer EV lite. Here’s a quick look at the RST which features the mid-gate for increased storage and a whole lot of other options. I imagine a large percentage of our audience is here for this:

E-Trunk is a Frunk

Just like the F-150, Chevy’s Silverado has a large frunk, but again, they are giving it a name which won’t stick called the “E-trunk” (Being a first mover has its advantages). While notably smaller than the F-150 – 14 cubic feet vs. 10 – it also offers a plug in front for charging tools even while driving or idle via the app. Chevy said those wider sidebars were to house a better front suspension than Ford’s. I think for most work uses, 10 cubic feet will be enough, but for a few this might be a dealbreaker.

Silverado DC Fast charging at 350kW

On every EV drive, one of the first places I go is the DC fast charging station, even if it isn’t on the itinerary (it never is).

We were only given vehicles with over 50% charge, but I still wanted to see what kind of speed I could get out of an EA station and maybe piece together a charging curve. From 61-63% charge, it charged steady at about 208kW, which is an impressive speed until you realize it would take an hour to fill a full battery at that speed. Of course the charging will be much faster at the beginning and much slower at the end of the charge. Chevy put together this small clip on the matter:

And that’s the thing about having a huge battery like this: you can charge it at really high power, but it still takes a long time to really fill up. Chevy says at its fastest pace, you can add 100 miles in 10 minutes. Condolences if there’s only a 50kW fast charger around – that’s a 4+ hour “fast” charge to go from empty to full.

Home and work level 2 AC charging goes up to 80A here which will take over 10 hours to go from empty to full. On a more typical 40A charger, it will take 20 hours, but again that’s adding over 450 miles of range. Most fleet truck scenarios draw way less power in a day so 40A is probably sufficient to add ~300 miles in a 12 hour night.

Silverado EV Drive dynamics

Maybe the biggest surprise of the Silverado EV, besides its range, is its ability to drive like a commuter car (not that it should be used for commuting!) I was shocked at how easy it is to drive and how quick my stress levels went down to a typical car levels. The car drives smooth and is very responsive for an 8500-lb beast with 61+ PSI tires. The suspension folks at GM should be commended. It should not be this easy to drive an 8500-lb vehicle!

Turning is satisfactory, but I can’t help but think 4-wheel turning should be an option in the Work Truck like the Hummer EV. Parking was tough and it took me an extra pass or 2 to slip into the EA station and parallel parking in town wasn’t fun. However, 4 wheel steering will be offered in higher end consumer versions of this truck.

Silverado EV interior

The Work Truck interior is what you’d expect from a work vehicle. Something you could hose down after a day in the mud. Dark plastic and vinyl as far as the eye can see, but in a good way.

That doesn’t mean you can’t drive in comfort, and I found all four seats to be comfortable. Not once during the hours of driving did the driver’s seat feel uncomfortable. The sound system and front screen were fine, though nowhere as good as the RST version coming at the end of the year. Though it won’t come with a mid-gate option, the Silverado Work Truck does have ample storage under the rear seats and still sports the biggest-in-its-EV-class 5’11” long bed.

Carplay/Android Auto

One of Chevy’s most controversial recent moves was to announce the removal of the phone projection in its EVs. However the Silverado EV Work Truck, which still uses Google’s Android Car system, will allow projection of CarPlay and Android Auto, this year anyway. Interestingly its consumer facing Silverados starting next year won’t allow projection. I think this an easily correctable mistake by GM and you can tell that most at Chevy are taking a wait and see approach with the reception this decision gets.

Note: in the video above I was initially told CarPlay would be removed in a software update but it would only be “removed” in a model year update.

Electrek’s Take

For some workers who drive really long distances and have towing, cold weather, etc. requirements, this is the only electric pickup that will meet their needs. Not only did we hit 450 miles, but we often succeeded it with up to 485 miles shown in Chevy’s estimator, in my experience. Nothing else like it even comes close.

But that capability of range isn’t free. Not only does the extra weight make for a more expensive truck that also costs a bit more on $/kWh. That 8500 lbs of weight also affects the handling though I will concede that Chevy suspension engineers worked miracles here.

So I wonder how many fleets actually need 450+ miles of range or even 350+miles. Sure it is nice to have for that rare instance, but it also means you are carting around and paying for a big, unused battery around town most of the time.

Then there’s the whole, why are people driving around 8500-lb. trucks when something like a Ford Maverick size vehicle will do. And we all know that there are a ton of these that are going to be used for commuting when a third of the sized vehicle with a third of the battery will do just fine. But that argument is for another day, and this Silverado EV will take a ton of ICE pickups off the road. And we’re here for that.

The Silverado EV is a super-compelling, no compromise work truck that will meet the needs of fleets that no other EV pickup can.

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Quick Charge | hydrogen hype falls flat amid very public failures

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Quick Charge | hydrogen hype falls flat amid very public failures

On today’s hyped up hydrogen episode of Quick Charge, we look at some of the fuel’s recent failures and billion dollar bungles as the fuel cell crowd continues to lose the credibility race against a rapidly evolving battery electric market.

We’re taking a look at some of the recent hydrogen failures of 2025 – including nine-figure product cancellations in the US and Korea, a series of simultaneous bus failures in Poland, and European executives, experts, and economists calling for EU governments to ditch hydrogen and focus on the deployment of a more widespread electric trucking infrastructure.

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyTuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.

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Got news? Let us know!
Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.

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Looking for an EV lease under $200 a month? Here’s what’s available in April

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Looking for an EV lease under 0 a month? Here's what's available in April

Believe it or not, you can lease an EV for under $200 a month. New deals on models like the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 and Kia EV6 are hard to pass up this month.

Electric vehicles have been all over the news lately, with the Trump administration threatening to end federal incentives and introducing new tariffs that are expected to lead to higher prices.

On the positive side, new EV models are arriving, giving buyers more options and driving prices down. Many automakers reported record US electric car sales in the first three months of 2024.

GM remained the number two seller of EVs behind Tesla after sales doubled in Q1 2025. With the new Equinox, Blazer, and Silverado EVs rolling out, Chevy is now the fastest-growing EV brand in the US. Ford’s Mustang Mach-E is off to its best sales start since launching, with over 11,600 models sold in the first quarter.

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With the 2025 models rolling out and about 15 new EVs arriving this year, many automakers are introducing steep discounts to move vehicles off the lot.

EVs-lease-$200-April
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 Limited (Source: Hyundai)

EVs for lease for under $200 a month in April

Although the decade-old Nissan LEAF remains one of the most affordable this April at just $149 per month, there are a few EVs under $200 right now that are worth taking a look at.

The new 2025 Hyundai IONIQ might be the best EV deal this month, with leases as low as $199. Hyundai is currently promoting a 24-month lease deal with $3,999 due at signing.

EVs-lease-$200-April
Hyundai’s new 2025 IONIQ 5 Limited with a Tesla NACS port (Source: Hyundai)

Hyundai upgraded the electric SUV with a bigger battery for more range (now up to 318 miles), a sleek new look inside and out, and it now comes with an NACS port so you can charge it at Tesla Superchargers.

The offer is for the IONIQ 5 SE RWD Standard Range, which has a driving range of up to 245 miles. For just $229 a month, you can snag the SE RWD model, which has a range of up to 318 miles and a more powerful (225 horsepower) electric motor. It’s also a 24-month lease with $3,999 due at signing.

Hyundai-2025-IONIQ-5-interior
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 Limited interior (Source: Hyundai)

To sweeten the deal, Hyundai is offering a free ChargePoint Home Flex Level 2 EV charger with the purchase or lease of any 2024 or 2025 IONIQ 5. If you already have one, you can opt for a $400 public charging credit.

After slashing lease prices this month, the 2025 Nissan Ariya is actually cheaper than the LEAF in some regions. In Southern California, the 2025 Nissan Ariya Evolve AWD is listed at just $129 per month. The AWD model has a range of up to 272 miles.

EVs-lease-$200-April
2025 Nissan Ariya Platinum+ e-4ORCE (Source: Nissan)

The deal is for 36 months, with $4,409 due at signing. In April, Nissan cut Ariya lease prices to around $239 in most other parts of the country.

Kia has a few EVs available to lease for under $200 a month in April. The 2025 Kia Niro EV Wind is listed at just $129 for 24 months, with $3,999 due at signing. Kia’s crossover SUV has EPA-estimated range of 253 miles.

EVs-lease-$200-April
2024 Kia EV6 (Source: Kia)

The 2024 EV6 may be worth considering at just $179 for 24 months ($3,999 due at signing). In California, the EV6 Light Long Range RWD is only slightly more than the Niro Wind.

In most other parts of the country, you can still find the EV6 for under $200 a month. The Light Long Range RWD trim offers up to 310 miles of EPA-estimated range.

Lease Price Term
(months)
Amount Due at Signing Driving Range
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 SE RWD Standard Range $199 24 $3,999 245 miles
2024 Kia EV6 Light Long Rang RWD $179 24 $3,999 310 miles
2024 Kia Niro EV Wind $129 24 $3,999 253 miles
2025 Nissan Ariya Evolve AWD $129 36 $4,409 272 miles
2025 Nissan LEAF S FWD $149 36 $2,629 149 miles
2024 Fiat 500 INSPI(RED) $199 24 $2,999 149 miles
EVs for lease for under $200 a month in April 2025

And don’t forget the 2024 Fiat 500e, which is now listed at just $199 for 24 months with $2,999 due at signing. The electric hatchback offers a range of up to 149 miles.

If you are looking to spend a little more, check out our list of EVs you can lease for under $300 a month.

Ready to snag the savings while they are still here? At under $200 a month, some of these EV lease deals are hard to pass up right now. Check out our links below to find deals in your area.

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The US’s first solar panels over canals pilot is now online [video]

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The US’s first solar panels over canals pilot is now online [video]

Project Nexus, the first solar panel canopies over irrigation canals in the US, is now online in California, and there are plans to expand the project to other areas.

Project Nexus is a $20 million pilot in central California’s Turlock Irrigation District launched in October 2022. The project team is exploring solar over canal design, deployment, and co-benefits using canal infrastructure and the electrical grid.

India already has solar panels over canals, but Project Nexus is the first of its kind in the US.

The Turlock Irrigation District was the first irrigation district formed in California in 1887. It provides irrigation water to 4,700 growers who farm around 150,000 acres in the San Joaquin Valley.

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Project Nexus will explore whether the solar panels reduce water evaporation as a result of midday shade and wind mitigation, create improvements to water quality through reduced vegetative growth, reduce canal maintenance as a result of reduced vegetative growth, and, of course, generate renewable electricity.

The California Department of Water Resources, utility company Turlock Irrigation District, Marin County, California-based water and energy project developer Solar AquaGrid, and The University of California, Merced, are partnering on the pilot. Project Nexus originated from a 2021 research project led by UC Merced alumna and project scientist Brandi McKuin.

Solar panels were installed at two sites over both wide- and narrow-span sections of Turlock Irrigation District canals in Stanislaus County, in various orientations. The sections range from 20 feet wide to 100 feet wide. University of California, Merced has positioned research equipment at both sites to collect baseline data so the researchers can decide where solar will work and where it won’t.

In February 2023, Project Nexus announced it would also deploy long-term iron flow battery storage in the form of two ESS 75kW turnkey “Energy Warehouse” batteries.

You can learn more about Project Nexus here:

Read more: In a US first, California will pilot solar-panel canopies over canals


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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*

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