Trail Boss has a proven reputation amongst off-road adventure drivers, but has Chevrolet unintentionally got its new model timing perfect? By virtue of delay?
The market for EV crew cabs remains small, but legacy OEMs can’t allow Rivian and Tesla to woo the most valuable customers. With Cybertruck desperately struggling with oversupply and public perception, Chevrolet’s latest Silverado dual cab version might just have arrived at the most serendipitous possible time.
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EV development and delivery cycles have been wildly elastic over the last three years as OEMs try to balance the cost of technology integration with shifting market demand. Chevrolet’s been later than expected with the Silverado EV, but the dedicated off-roading version makes it worth the wait.
The BEV meant to go off-road
Engineers have leveraged EV architectures’ benefits for battery-powered crew cab trucks, meaning that most available models have enormous ground clearance. But true off-roaders know that successfully getting out into the wild and back home without assistance is about more than pure underbody clearance and snag point vulnerability.
That’s where Chevrolet’s Silverado product planning and engineering team has been so acute with the EV Trail Boss. With 540kW and four-wheel steering, it has all the power and agility to park with ease and conquer trails. And Chevrolet’s planning team has specced the Silverado EV Trail Boss with rubber that makes sense for off-roaders, instead of only worrying about colling resistance.
Ready to Boss the trail
Tires can be a specific vulnerability with EVs. Chevrolet’s latest Silverado Trail Boss prevents any rock crawling or desert-raiding anxiety with 35-inch all-terrain tires, featuring an appropriate tread pattern and reinforced casings. Even better, these tires are secured to 18-inch Beadlock rims, allowing secure steering inputs in extreme off-road terrain, at very low tire pressures, without the risk of tires dismounting.
Leveraging the excellent traction and terrain rolling potential of those all-terrain tires and Beadlock rims, the Silverado EV Trail Boss benefits from a 2-inch lift kit.
The truck’s overall underbody and contact point geometry is deeply impressive, with a 31.6-degree approach angle, 19.2-degrees of mid-point breakover, and 25.1-degree trailing clearance, at the rear. Total ground clearance is an impressive 10-inches, too.
With Ford not currently offering a Raptoresque version of the F150 Lightning and Tesla struggling with deep discounts and demand issues on Cybertruck, the Silverado EV Trail Boss has arrived with a strong off-road audience offering at a time when its rivals are either absent or struggling to deliver true trail-rated EV crew cabs of their own.
