When you had been to stroll right into a Chevrolet dealership right now and ask for a Blazer, the salesperson would present you a milquetoast mid-sized medium-priced crossover. Its beginning MSRP is $33,400, and you may select from a two-liter turbocharged inline-four cylinder or a 3.6-liter V6. Both manner, you’ll end up pumping gasoline. That adjustments subsequent 12 months when Chevrolet’s new Blazer EV launches.
Chevrolet first teased the Blazer SS EV back in March of this 12 months, and at last confirmed the world what the efficiency electrical crossover would seem like on June 13 when GM CEO Mary Barra tweeted a photo of it. Whereas we don’t but know the specs of the automobile—these will likely be unveiled in a few month—the automobile appears promising even with out the main points. Normal Motors, and by extension Chevrolet, has all kinds of electrical motors and electrical battery stacks to select from when constructing this machine, so count on to see at the very least just a few variants.
The one pictured in Barra’s tweet seems to be the upmarket efficiency “SS” mannequin, which is probably going being constructed to go head-to-head with Ford’s Mustang Mach-E GT. It’s greater than seemingly that this machine will likely be constructed on GM’s Ultium battery know-how, which it co-developed with Honda. And if GM used the identical motors from the all-wheel drive model of the electrical Cadillac Lyriq, the Blazer SS EV would have precisely what it must combat its Ford and Tesla rivals, placing down about 500 horsepower to the Mach-E GT’s 459 and the Mannequin Y Efficiency’s 450. Based mostly on what we are able to infer from the pictures of the Blazer SS EV, it appears to be like prefer it may merely be a Lyriq in Chevrolet clothes.
If the Blazer SS EV is in fact Lyriq-based, it’ll seemingly undercut each Tesla’s Mannequin Y Efficiency and Ford’s Mach-E GT on worth. Cadillac’s Lyriq AWD is priced at an impressively aggressive $64,990, and a lower-content Chevrolet-badged mannequin would seemingly fall an excellent bit beneath that $60,000 mark, which is close to precisely the place each the Ford and Tesla are priced.
Briefly, we don’t count on the Blazer SS EV to be a bargain-priced EV, but it surely’ll nearly actually supply comparable efficiency for much less cash to the competitors, which Chevrolet has a historical past of doing. Being on the identical platform because the Lyriq would additionally point out that it’s seemingly {that a} base mannequin Blazer EV could be rear-wheel drive and carry about 312 horsepower.
The present gasoline-powered Blazer crossover seems to share nothing with its future electrical counterpart, and such a branding strategy is already in place with Chevrolet’s Silverado EV: The gasoline-powered Silverado is a very totally different automobile than the electrical Silverado. The previous is constructed within the custom of metal ladder-frame pickups, whereas the Silverado EV is a pickup constructed on the identical quasi-unibody platform because the GMC Hummer EV. As with the Silverado variants, the Blazer EV makes use of extra aggressive—and subjectively extra engaging—bodywork than its gasoline sibling.
Chevy says the Blazer EV is coming in 2023, and along with the smaller and less-expensive electrical Equinox and Bolt EUV, will set the automaker up properly for the EV future with three totally different sized electrical crossovers. If the Bolt EUV and Equinox EV each begin across the $30,000 mark, and the Blazer slots in someplace within the low-to-mid $50,000 vary, Chevrolet may have a handful of hits on its arms. These are the automobiles that new automobile patrons need to purchase, and making them electrical whereas nonetheless hanging on to the affordability that Chevy is understood for is a great play within the present automobile market.
Normal Motors has deeper expertise constructing EVs than you would possibly assume: Not solely was it liable for the primary mass-market electrical automobile within the EV1 manner again in 1996, but it surely delivered the plug-in hybrid Volt in 2010 and the trendy battery-electric Bolt hatchback in 2016. Whereas corporations like Nissan and Tesla have constructed extra EVs, GM has been doing it longer.
The brand new Chevrolet Blazer SS EV is simply one of many many new EVs deliberate to come back out of the Normal Motors steady within the subsequent handful of years. The corporate introduced in 2020 that it will make investments $35 billion globally in EV and autonomous automobile tech by way of 2025. That included changing the outdated Hamtramck plant in Detroit into an all-EV facility known as Manufacturing facility Zero.
Add in that the corporate is rolling out new battery electrical fashions at breakneck pace, and this second could possibly be the tipping level towards widespread adoption of EVs in America. GM says it desires to promote 1,000,000 EVs per 12 months in North America and China by the center of the last decade, and it solely has a pair years left to make that occur. Buick lately introduced it will be going all-electric, GMC already sells the very massive Hummer EV, and Cadillac can be pivoting to electrical. Between the upcoming electrical Corvette, Silverado EV, the Blazer EV, and the Equinox EV, Chevrolet has its EV bases coated.
