GM to unveil all-electric Silverado at CES in January, confirms 2023 production

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The onslaught of pickup trucks powered solely by electrons continues, with General Motors recently confirming its new Silverado EV will enter production sometime in the 2023 calendar year. The remarks were made by a senior GM exec at the Deutsche Bank AutoTech Conference, an event held on December 9 and 10, with presentations and panels involving some of the world’s biggest automakers.

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Silverado EV – assuming that will be its name and not “Silverado Electra” or “Silverado E” (“SilveradoE”?) – will deploy The General’s slick new Ultium family of batteries. They are the same units planned for installation in machines like the Cadillac Lyriq and GMC Hummer EV, notable for being completely different than the troublesome batteries with which Chevy is dealing in the little electric Bolt.

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Some versions will have four-wheel steering and a potential range in excess of 550 kilometres. Both of these features are also on the Hummer, along with the Ultium batteries, leading some to wonder if the Chevy will be more than simply a GMC in Bowtie clothes. Given the price point in which they will be competing (a Hummer-like starting price of six figures is out of the question) that seems rather unlikely. We’ll find out at CES.

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A quick perusal of the AutoTech transcripts revealed a couple more nuggets, including GM exec veep Doug Parks joking describing some autonomous driving technology as “San Francisco Cruise,” a nod to the company’s existing Super Cruise and upcoming Ultra Cruise driving aids. Parks said he had “the pleasure last Thursday evening at about 11:15 p.m. in San Francisco of taking my first driverless ride about 30 minutes through the street of San Francisco, no driver in the car.” That’s a new revelation, by the way.

Elsewhere in the conversation, Parks said “we believe EV life starts at 300 miles [480 km] of range, not 200 or 250 [400 km],” confirming GM won’t be messing around with small-range machines like the Mazda MX-30 and Mini Cooper S E. He also discussed an Equinox-size EV, describing it as a $30,000 EV “that’s going to have 300-plus miles of range.”

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Across town, Ford big cheese Jim Farley is promising “incredibly high volume” out of a full-size all-electric pickup truck which is planned as a follow-up to the F-150 Lightning, which is not yet available in dealers. To say car companies peer far into the future with their magic crystal ball is an understatement. This mystery truck will have a new platform compared to the Lightning, and will probably be assembled in one of the new facilities Ford has earmarked for EV production. This won’t happen for a few years, but it’s still a fascinating reminder of the amount of lead time plowed into the development of a completely new vehicle.

As for the Lightning, Farley asserts there is “160,000” units of demand, two or three times higher than what Ford anticipated. It was recently announced that plans are afoot to double the planned production to about 80,000 units, and also to cap reservations at 200,000 .