Many apologies if you saw me having serious traction issues at intersections, roundabouts and freeway entrance ramps earlier this week in the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado Electric Vehicle, in its new LT trim. 

Revolutionary as it is, this new member of the GM EV family came up short on a couple of counts, the first being it’s a nearly 9,000-pound vehicle attempting to drive in the real winter on factory-issued, ultra-mediocre, 22-inch Bridgestone Alenza tires. Traction on ice was not easy, despite standard four-wheel-drive. 

The second was a fairly serious power problem as I woke the truck up after Monday night’s not-record-setting -16 weather, and it went into semi-frozen low-acceleration limp mode and flashed warning lights all the way from Breck to Frisco. Once warm, no problems, but pretty dicey on Highway 9. 

Thirdly, it’s a very large, and in this case, very Riptide Blue Metallic truck with Michigan plates, mixing semi-traditional and sort of Chevy Avalanche-styled truck looks with the rounded surfaces and extra-shiny wheels found on other EVs. Dudes in delivery trucks lose their minds when they see that combo, I gather. 

Yes, the truck really is almost 9,000 pounds, thanks to an extended-range battery core that weighs more than a Miata or two and fills up the whole bottom of the truck’s cab outline. When it appears, the $57,000 Work Truck version of the Silverado will be good for a standard range of 282 miles and a remarkable-if-it-happens 492 miles with the maximum range battery pack added.

The flashier, $75,000 LT model offers an extended range battery boasting 408 miles, but that drops back to 390 miles if you add the $10,000 premium package, including those oversized wheels, a flexible tailgate and bedliner, plus Super Cruise hands-free driving. The full price was indeed $85,000 for the vehicle I tested.

The reality of that modular and super-massive battery capacity could mean good things for some users, provided they have low-cost at-home charging, a budget for winter tires and perhaps a heated garage. 

Officially, the two-motor LT trim (Hummer offers a three-motor system) is rated for 645 peak horsepower and 765 lb-ft of torque. Rather remarkably, it will also pull up to 12,500 pounds of trailer and carry an 1,800-pound payload. How far, I do not know, but that’s it’s physical capability.

And not unlike the Hummer EV truck I drove a few years ago (its new SUV version is coming to me in a couple of weeks), you can go stupidly fast in an unladen Silverado EV, but the battery does not like to travel above about 64 mph, ever, if you’d like to retain some of that range. My uphill power consumption was some of the lowest numbers I have ever seen in an EV, with the official rating being 64 electronic combined city/highway mpg, versus 96 in the Equinox EV and 80 in a Kia EV9 

I used up 30% of my charge doing nothing in particular and spent nearly an hour and $30 at the not-so-fast chargers at the Starbucks in Idaho Springs to get it back to 80%. Driving slowly and icily over Loveland helped keep some extra juice in reserve — minus the whole low-temp freeze-out — and the truck lost no range at all driving downhill from the tunnel to Golden and picking up power through regenerative braking. 

If you’d like to more aggressively recharge it, you can pull on a small tab behind the wheel, the same as you would do on the old Chevy Bolt EV, but it’s far too draggy to use on the highway.

It’s all typical EV stuff, just on a much bigger scale, with some pretty serious promises of range, provided you maybe don’t drive up any mountain passes.

Inside, Silverado’s LT is a classy and leathery affair, with an enormous rear seat and a wide-open rear floor. Its 17.7-inch touchscreen display and the 11-inch digital instrument panel are reminiscent of those in the tiny-by-comparison Equinox EV, with nearly identical functions.

Oddly, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto access are missing, and only available on a smaller touchscreen optioned in on lower-level Silverado EVs.

Committing to lower speeds to conserve power, I also played around with the Super Cruise on 100% dry roads and found it eerily effective on a vehicle this size, with real hands-free cornering and even automatic passing tech. 

You may have seen video of Silverado’s fancy and complicated manual in-cab bed extension system, which allows you to remove and store the rear cabin glass and open up the bed into the cab, giving you a few extra feet for long loads.

The $85,000 LT model came equipped with a fairly atrocious tonneau cover that flaps viciously in crosswinds, but was effective at covering up that large bed and its series of power outlets. Up front, there’s a large frunk under a power-lifting (but not exactly power-dropping) hood, complete with extra power outlets.

And … you now have maybe a day left to potentially qualify for any federal EV credits. Good luck with that, as well. 

Andy Stonehouse’s column “Mountain Wheels” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Stonehouse has worked as an editor and writer in Colorado since 1998, focusing on automotive coverage since 2004. He lives in Golden. Contact him at summitmountainwheels@gmail.com.