So, we have had the Silverado EV about 3 months now, and have taken two road trips. The first was to Rainy Lake where we rented a houseboat with our daughters family for a 4 day 3 night outing. I charged the truck to 100% state of charge (SOC) the night before we left using our off peak charger at home, which is all we had used for charging up to that point. At a rate of 0.053/KW it would cost 10.87 to charge from 0-100% ( which is something you don't realistically do) The truck was pretty well loaded inside the cab and the covered bed, with all the things that some of us considered essential (but about 3/4ths were never used), so I would guess 6-700lbs.
We arrived at the houseboat rental co. 237 miles later with a 52% remaining SOC. So theoretically we could have turned around and headed back home, and made it back with about 4% SOC remaining. However since the houseboat rental offered one of their RV hookups to slow charge the truck while we were on the boat for three nights, we took advantage of that and charged to 80% during the first two days, and let it go to 100% the last night before we left in the morning. So making it home again left plenty of margin, although we made a couple of stops etc, and didn't go straight back the way we came, we still ended up with 48% on arrival back home.
The second trip was to Oshkosh this past week, towing the 550. I wanted to arrive at the Oshkosh campground with more than a minimal charge, and wasn't finding any high speed chargers close to my Oshkosh destination, so I routed through Plover,WI where there was a Kwik Trip(KT) with a 400 KW high speed charger. That was 277 miles from home, and about 70 miles from my destination. When I arrived at the Plover KT I still had a 25% SOC and a little over 100 miles of range left. So I could have made it the 347 miles to my destination, but since I wanted to use the truck as my TD power source during my stay, I topped off to 80%, while I used the rest room and grabbed a bite to eat, and in 25 minutes I was back on the final leg to Osh. I arrived there with 62% SOC, and hooked up the TD, and powered the faulty Dometic freezer continuously running in the truck cab, which provided ice blocks for the food cooler for the next two days. When I headed home it was at a 57% SOC, so I decided to head back to the KT in Plover and charge up to 80% again.
Since the original trip from home to Plover started with a 100% charge, and now I was leaving Plover for home with a 80% charge, I may have made it, but with probably only about <5% margin, so I stopped at one of the only other KT's along my route with high speed chargers, 172 miles west in Cameron, and brought the charge back up from 35%to 80%. I arrived home 123 miles later with 52% SOC.
So, all in all, while this is still an early, and fairly limited experience, I feel pretty confident that with a 100% charge, the Silverado EV Max range will pull the 550 about 300 miles with about a 20% reserve to find a high speed charger, or about 240 miles + reserve with an 80% charge. When not towing, about 400+ miles with reserve when loaded up, or about 340 miles with an 80% charge. These trips were both intentionally routed on non-freeway roads with speed limits of 55-65, and driving at or within a couple miles of the limit.
Those were my first times using public chargers. Before the Oshkosh trip I had put about 3500+ miles on the truck using just the level 2 off peak rate home charger and had spent about $88 on electricity for charging, for about 2.5 cents / mile, which was about 1/4th the cost of running my prior TV, a VW Passat diesel at 50 mpg, and $5/gal diesel when not towing, and about 32 mpg while towing.
While I rarely use it's potential power, it's kinda fun knowing that at a 0-60 time of 4.1 seconds, this EV is faster off the line than almost every ICE muscle car, yet more economical than a diesel VW. But just like the muscle car, if you use that kind of power regularly, your efficiency goes down the tubes, and everything else wears out prematurely too.
I haven't needed to get any service done on it yet, so not sure what that will be like, but I will be bringing it in next week for a regular tire rotation (my jack isn't strong enough to lift it ), so we'll see how that goes. So far I'm very happy with the truck, but time will tell if it works out to be all I hoped it to be, and I will update this review as it seems warranted.
We arrived at the houseboat rental co. 237 miles later with a 52% remaining SOC. So theoretically we could have turned around and headed back home, and made it back with about 4% SOC remaining. However since the houseboat rental offered one of their RV hookups to slow charge the truck while we were on the boat for three nights, we took advantage of that and charged to 80% during the first two days, and let it go to 100% the last night before we left in the morning. So making it home again left plenty of margin, although we made a couple of stops etc, and didn't go straight back the way we came, we still ended up with 48% on arrival back home.
The second trip was to Oshkosh this past week, towing the 550. I wanted to arrive at the Oshkosh campground with more than a minimal charge, and wasn't finding any high speed chargers close to my Oshkosh destination, so I routed through Plover,WI where there was a Kwik Trip(KT) with a 400 KW high speed charger. That was 277 miles from home, and about 70 miles from my destination. When I arrived at the Plover KT I still had a 25% SOC and a little over 100 miles of range left. So I could have made it the 347 miles to my destination, but since I wanted to use the truck as my TD power source during my stay, I topped off to 80%, while I used the rest room and grabbed a bite to eat, and in 25 minutes I was back on the final leg to Osh. I arrived there with 62% SOC, and hooked up the TD, and powered the faulty Dometic freezer continuously running in the truck cab, which provided ice blocks for the food cooler for the next two days. When I headed home it was at a 57% SOC, so I decided to head back to the KT in Plover and charge up to 80% again.
Since the original trip from home to Plover started with a 100% charge, and now I was leaving Plover for home with a 80% charge, I may have made it, but with probably only about <5% margin, so I stopped at one of the only other KT's along my route with high speed chargers, 172 miles west in Cameron, and brought the charge back up from 35%to 80%. I arrived home 123 miles later with 52% SOC.
So, all in all, while this is still an early, and fairly limited experience, I feel pretty confident that with a 100% charge, the Silverado EV Max range will pull the 550 about 300 miles with about a 20% reserve to find a high speed charger, or about 240 miles + reserve with an 80% charge. When not towing, about 400+ miles with reserve when loaded up, or about 340 miles with an 80% charge. These trips were both intentionally routed on non-freeway roads with speed limits of 55-65, and driving at or within a couple miles of the limit.
Those were my first times using public chargers. Before the Oshkosh trip I had put about 3500+ miles on the truck using just the level 2 off peak rate home charger and had spent about $88 on electricity for charging, for about 2.5 cents / mile, which was about 1/4th the cost of running my prior TV, a VW Passat diesel at 50 mpg, and $5/gal diesel when not towing, and about 32 mpg while towing.
While I rarely use it's potential power, it's kinda fun knowing that at a 0-60 time of 4.1 seconds, this EV is faster off the line than almost every ICE muscle car, yet more economical than a diesel VW. But just like the muscle car, if you use that kind of power regularly, your efficiency goes down the tubes, and everything else wears out prematurely too.
I haven't needed to get any service done on it yet, so not sure what that will be like, but I will be bringing it in next week for a regular tire rotation (my jack isn't strong enough to lift it ), so we'll see how that goes. So far I'm very happy with the truck, but time will tell if it works out to be all I hoped it to be, and I will update this review as it seems warranted.
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I'd love to have one. Seriously, I'm a broken record...they just scare me away with cost of aquisition combined with a $20,000 battery later. Maybe I've just been on the short end of the stick with my Diesel experience, and being hosed by big purchases a few times and don't want to get burned again. As much as I like to think I"m an analytical, I am highly emotional in many of my decisions.
