Moby Dick - The Silverado EV RST FE Reviewed By Rivian Owner

[Rivianero]

Good summary from the OP.

We also rented a Silverado EV while our R1T was in the SC over Christmas and New Years and used it for a road trip to New Orleans. Rented ours from Enterprise. It was the 4WT work truck rather than the fancy and $$$ RST version.

While we missed the creature comforts (no powered or heated seats, manually dimming rearview mirror, no hydraulics or drive modes to speak of), the truck was pretty comfortable and definitely felt solid. Interior is plastic and vinyl as befits a work truck. Ours had no floor mats; the floor was a forgiving plastic that I kind of liked (perhaps flexible plastic over foam pad?).

Suspension, handling and performance were not at all comparable to our R1T. My guess is that the work truck version is somewhat "nerfed" by Chevy to get folks to pay more for the RST. Acceleration may just be software limited. Suspension was especially "truck like", even worse than my ancient 2002 Avalanche; likely simplest parts whereas the RST has fancy stuff.

We missed the gear tunnel, but flipped up the rear seats and had tons of storage room that way. Huge center console storage is very nice. The Silverado frunk would be an amazing setup for a mobile workshop, with a good "workbench" and 120v outlets, but it does have less useable room IMHO.

Not to beat a dead horse, but wireless CarPlay and Android Auto were solid experiences in the Silverado. Great for a rental where you don't have to spend time learning unfamiliar systems and can just pair BT and go.

Likewise, the physical buttons made it pretty easy to access features like climate controls. I recognize that physical controls do limit software flexibility. Chevy seems to have found a sweet spot, with some of the toggle controls generically labeled "feature".

Dynamic cruise control and lane keeping were solid; much less fickle than my gen 1 R1T. What one would expect from a giant incumbent automaker.

The 4WT's 500 miles of range was especially nice for the long trip. Only really had to stop to charge once in each direction. We did have one issue that the truck got into some sort of offroad mode after we charged a an Electrify America fast charger. Not sure what caused that and I couldn't find controls to get out of it. Ultimately had to get out, lock the vehicle, and get back in in order to reset things. Happened only one time. Charged without issues at the same charger on the return trip. Charged fine at Tesla, north of NOLA.

I'm sure the Silverado is much less energy efficient, the tradeoff being that it is not made of aluminum. Definitely comes off as a solid work truck that wouldn't be scared of a little rough handling. If I did more serious work on our ranch and didn't want the R1 luxury and off-road capabilities, the Silverado EV 4WT would be a solid contender.

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[Electrified Outdoors]

Good summary from the OP.

We also rented a Silverado EV while our R1T was in the SC over Christmas and New Years and used it for a road trip to New Orleans. Rented ours from Enterprise. It was the 4WT work truck rather than the fancy and $$$ RST version.

While we missed the creature comforts (no powered or heated seats, manually dimming rearview mirror, no hydraulics or drive modes to speak of), the truck was pretty comfortable and definitely felt solid. Interior is plastic and vinyl as befits a work truck. Ours had no floor mats; the floor was a forgiving plastic that I kind of liked (perhaps flexible plastic over foam pad?).

Suspension, handling and performance were not at all comparable to our R1T. My guess is that the work truck version is somewhat "nerfed" by Chevy to get folks to pay more for the RST. Acceleration may just be software limited. Suspension was especially "truck like", even worse than my ancient 2002 Avalanche; likely simplest parts whereas the RST has fancy stuff.

We missed the gear tunnel, but flipped up the rear seats and had tons of storage room that way. Huge center console storage is very nice. The Silverado frunk would be an amazing setup for a mobile workshop, with a good "workbench" and 120v outlets, but it does have less useable room IMHO.

Not to beat a dead horse, but wireless CarPlay and Android Auto were solid experiences in the Silverado. Great for a rental where you don't have to spend time learning unfamiliar systems and can just pair BT and go.

Likewise, the physical buttons made it pretty easy to access features like climate controls. I recognize that physical controls do limit software flexibility. Chevy seems to have found a sweet spot, with some of the toggle controls generically labeled "feature".

Dynamic cruise control and lane keeping were solid; much less fickle than my gen 1 R1T. What one would expect from a giant incumbent automaker.

The 4WT's 500 miles of range was especially nice for the long trip. Only really had to stop to charge once in each direction. We did have one issue that the truck got into some sort of offroad mode after we charged a an Electrify America fast charger. Not sure what caused that and I couldn't find controls to get out of it. Ultimately had to get out, lock the vehicle, and get back in in order to reset things. Happened only one time. Charged without issues at the same charger on the return trip. Charged fine at Tesla, north of NOLA.

I'm sure the Silverado is much less energy efficient, the tradeoff being that it is not made of aluminum. Definitely comes off as a solid work truck that wouldn't be scared of a little rough handling. If I did more serious work on our ranch and didn't want the R1 luxury and off-road capabilities, the Silverado EV 4WT would be a solid contender.

Thanks for sharing! I really enjoyed reading your response. Honestly I consider myself lucky to have this and our R1S.

 

[iamnid]

I thought I'd come back to this after the out of spec 10% challenge results were posted recently.

For those unfamiliar, this test has vehicles fully preconditioned, they plug them into a DC fast charger at 10%, let them charge for 15 minutes and see how far they can drive at 80mph before arriving back at 10%. Basically, shows how many highway miles the vehicle can add in 15 minutes.

Yes, the Silverado has a much bigger battery than any Rivian. Yes, it may be less efficient than an R1T BUT, the results:

Silverado 4WT: 129 miles added in 15 minutes
R1T dual motor large: 85 miles added in 15 minutes
R1T dual motor max: 85 miles added in 15 minutes



Charging speed definitely matters.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Charging speed does matter, but you'd still have to drive a Chevy.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

Range varies. How fast it charges is the most important. 10-80% in 38 minutes. The problem with the "10% challenge" is that range varies so you can't rely on the numbers. How fast you can go from 10% to 80% (typical worst case when road trip charging) is the measure IMO.

I did this video a couple of months ago.

 

[Rivianero]

I would say that, although this "how fast can I recharge" test can offer insights, it tends to put the focus on one narrow aspect that is an edge case for many and, let's be honest, reinforces a bad practice of one wants to have long term battery health.

While there is certainly a portion of users who will primarily fast charge or be doing frequent road trips, the vast majority of EV miles driven are from overnight L2 charging.

Interesting to know the boundaries, but focusing on this measurement as the ultimate way to determine which vehicle is "better" is just wrong.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

I would say that, although this "how fast can I recharge" test can offer insights, it tends to put the focus on one narrow aspect that is an edge case for many and, let's be honest, reinforces a bad practice of one wants to have long term battery health.

While there is certainly a portion of users who will primarily fast charge or be doing frequent road trips, the vast majority of EV miles driven are from overnight L2 charging.

Interesting to know the boundaries, but focusing on this measurement as the ultimate way to determine which vehicle is "better" is just wrong.

That’s a good point. I think this goes back to folks needing more education on electric vehicles, knowing the difference between public DC fast charging and charging at home, etc..

DC fast charging performance is still important even if more miles are driven on level two charging though. even if folks only take a road trip four times a year, they want to know how much time the charging will add to their trip.

Also everything that I’ve seen published even on older EV‘s like the Chevy bolt show that DC fast charging does not have that much of an effect on degradation.

I have seen a couple of posts from folks in different EV communities where they have traveled 100,000 miles almost exclusively DC fast charging and they had seven or 8% degradation most of which was probably age related as those vehicles were over 3 years old. IIRC most I saw was 10%.

 

[Skysurfer]

I thought I'd come back to this after the out of spec 10% challenge results were posted recently.

For those unfamiliar, this test has vehicles fully preconditioned, they plug them into a DC fast charger at 10%, let them charge for 15 minutes and see how far they can drive at 80mph before arriving back at 10%. Basically, shows how many highway miles the vehicle can add in 15 minutes.

Yes, the Silverado has a much bigger battery than any Rivian. Yes, it may be less efficient than an R1T BUT, the results:

Silverado 4WT: 129 miles added in 15 minutes
R1T dual motor large: 85 miles added in 15 minutes
R1T dual motor max: 85 miles added in 15 minutes



Charging speed definitely matters.

You hit the nail on the head. For normal driving, the rate of distance added is the only metric that matters. If you have two vehicles that can replenish 150 miles of range in 15 minutes, one only charges at 30kW the other at 300kW, they both get you there in the same time, one is just massively more efficient.

Now when you are towing that all goes out the window. You will have a fixed amount of additional energy required to move the trailer and in that case, you will need higher charging speeds to replenish that extra load since that is not influenced much by the tow vehicle. So if you need 500Wh/mi for a trailer, the super efficient vehicle is going to suffer a much bigger range hit and take longer to charge over the larger battery, inefficient vehicle, since the total hit to efficient is a smaller percentage.

In the made up example of two vehicles that regain 150 miles in 15 minutes that means the super efficient one uses 50Wh/mi while the inefficient one uses 500Wh/mi under normal driving. With a trailer the first one would use 550Wh/mi and do 13.6 miles on the 7.5kWh charged in 15 minutes and the other would use 1000Wh/mi and do 75 miles on the 75kWh charged in the same 15 minutes.

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