GM Explains Why New E-Ray Is a Hybrid and Not an All-Electric Car

With GM and other automotive manufacturers rushing to make all-electric vehicles why did they decide to make the new E-Ray a hybrid?

The new E-Ray Corvette has been dominating the headlines recently. And with good reason. The C8 Stingray represented a dynamic shift for the Corvette with the engine going behind the driver. The E-Ray changes things up even more with an electrified, all-wheel drive platform. Notice we said electrified and not all-electric. That is a subtle but major difference. The auto industry, including General Motors, is pushing forward as quickly as possible to develop all-electric vehicles. So why would they not include their flagship sportscar in this strategy? Why a hybrid? The new E-Ray is the only hybrid model offered by GM that will be for sale in the United States. In a recent interview with CNBC GM explained why they chose to go hybrid over an all-electric alternative. Although, it is likely that an all-electric Corvette will eventually arrive.

“It’s just a new market opportunity for us as a company to showcase our engineering and our development of the whole architecture of C8,” GM President Mark Reuss told CNBC’sPhil LeBeau. “General Motors and Chevrolet keep increasing what we’re delivering for the Corvette customer.” Well, there is no arguing that the Corvette customer has been delivered some amazing products recently. The base C8 Stingray is a game changer and the new Z06 is winning just about every automotive award out there. And while GM does offer plenty of other EVs the Corvette has always occupied a special place in the GM portfolio. It is a special car with a unique demographic. If GM was going to do something different for any car it would be the Corvette.

Capital Investment

As is true with so many things in life, it all comes down to the bottom line. The hybrid powertrain was developed in conjunction with the regular C8 Stingray. So, the capital investment made into the research and development of the E-Ray as a hybrid was already spent before the more recent push into EVs. The Corvette plant in Bowling Green will not need any additional investment or downtime for retooling in order to produce the hybrid E-Ray. “The hybrid system was specifically designed for the eighth-generation Corvette, according to Harlan Charles, Chevrolet Corvette product marketing manager.” We saw this clearly in a video we covered recently of a C8 Z06 getting cracked open.

Not a Plug-In Hybrid

The E-Ray with 655 horsepower on tap remains all about performance. This is not built with the main goal being better gas mileage. It is about performance, just like a Corvette should be. “There is no plug-in piece of this,” Reuss said. “This is a truly performance-oriented electrified system.” The E-Ray is certainly no lightweight as it is but additional batteries and plug-in technologies would add yet more weight. “The mission of this vehicle was performance, performance, performance,” said Mike Kociba, lead Corvette development engineer. “Every kilogram or pound had to earn its way in from a mass standpoint. … It hurt performance, plain and simple.”

All-Electric Coming

We may get the E-Ray hybrid now, but it is nearly certain that an all-electric Corvette will eventually be produced. “It’s just part of our journey to what we have talked about before that there are ‘electrified’ and then fully electric Corvettes, and we’re certainly on the road to that,” Steve Majoros, vice president of Chevrolet marketing, said during a media briefing. “But in the meantime, we have a lot of technology bandwidth that we can still unpack with Corvette.” The EV Corvette is likely to come around the same time we start to see Corvette SUVs roam the streets. Yes, the world of the Corvette is changing rapidly. But at this exact moment in time, we may have available to us the best of all worlds.

Images: Chevrolet

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