Large Charge
July 2, 2026
Alex KiersteinThe Silverado EV Trail Boss is an absolute unit, in every sense of the term. In its massive wake, some ambiguity.
It’s impossible not to discuss the Chevrolet Silverado EV Trail Boss’ superlatives, so I won’t even attempt to avoid it. In order of importance, it is immensely, perversely heavy. It’s massive, a lane-filling block with huge blind spots. It has a truly ridiculous traction battery, giving almost 500 miles of range. Each of these aspects bring some very specific drawbacks. It also drives very nicely, with a well-calibrated four-wheel-steering system, a rompable throttle, and GM’s really quite good Super Cruise system.
Like its platform-mates, this is an EV that objectively doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s also one of the better things GM has ever screwed together. Shouldn’t exist, has a lot of good points regardless. And more importantly, it checks all of the capability boxes for … what buyer, exactly?
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy driving the Silverado EV once it got out of the back streets and onto something at least the size of an arterial. There’s a ton of power and torque (725 hp and 775 lb-ft of torque in Wide Open Watts mode) even considering the 8,500-pound quoted curb weight. The four-wheel steering helps a lot in every situation except avoiding curb damage to the wheels when parallel parking. In addition to monitoring each end of the thing (helped by its good cameras), I had to adjust the passenger mirror down and keep a close eye on the curb-side rear wheel, which obviously swings around when maneuvering. Not hard, just another thing to think about.
My cubby-loving son was intensely disappointed by the lack of hidden bins inside. But both of my boys were inordinately fond of the multi-position tailgate. I flipped out the letterbox portion for them to use as a counter, and flipped up two of the tonneau sections. They made the front half of the bed into a bit of a shade tent to escape the heat, and happily munched burgers and fries from the tailgate-table. Afterwards, despite the truck-ish ride, it was quiet and cool inside and they promptly fell asleep. They probably would have fallen asleep inside the rotating drum of a cement mixer—they were wiped out from a splash park before dinner—but let’s give the Silverado EV some credit.
That said, there wasn’t a moment in the Silverado EV in which I would have preferred it to, say, a Colorado-sized analogue with a proportionally smaller battery and curb weight. Like the Hummer EV, it’s just inordinately large. Stupidly large and heavy, as well as expensive. With no options, a Traill Boss is $89,195.
That’s $10.50 per pound, in case you’re curious.
The Silverado EV, and the other Ultium trucks, aren’t going away. And they prove that if you cram enough lithium into a single vehicle, it can do almost as much as a gas truck, with a lot of caveats and in specific circumstances. You can build a full-size EV pickup that can tow, that can drive almost 500 miles on a charge, that can recharge quickly. You can’t utilize ALL of the EV’s capabilities at the same time, however. It can tow a real load, but at the cost of awful electricity consumption per mile. I haven’t done it, but many others have. The Autopian got around 140 miles of range towing a trailer at roughly 80% the weight of the Silverado EV Trail Boss’ rated capacity, and their story is a worthwhile read.
The Silverado EV and all of its other massive kin attempt to do an end-run around lithium ion batteries’ inherent energy density shortfall compared to fossil fuel, and I am not a fan of the result. Even if you’re not doing some back-of-napkin math to figure out the route and charging stops for a towing journey, you’re hauling around just an epic amount of weight. Thousands of pounds of batteries, totaling more than 200 kWh, all to provide the energy storage capacity of …
… a hair over 6 gallons. (Not that an internal combustion engine can extract all of that usable energy, but still.)
The energy density just isn’t there yet. You can get around that with a giant battery, but I don’t know why you would. Especially at this end of the size spectrum, I have to think that replacing some of that excessive battery mass with a range extender and a little gasoline tank would pay absolute dividends for utility and even, perhaps, overall efficiency. There has to be a sweet spot. The Silverado EV Trail Boss is a vehicle that anticipates a battery technology that just isn’t here yet.
One response to “Large Charge”
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I wonder whether the original designers believed there would be a better storage option by the time they made it to production. I suppose if new tech does arrive then they can offer upgrades.
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