General Motors CEO Mary Barra has lifted the lid on the new Chevrolet Blazer EV – the firm’s crucial rival to the Tesla Model Y and Ford Mustang Mach-E.
Like its Blue Oval rival, the strikingly styled electric crossover will be sold alongside a mechanically independent ICE car and share with it a name the company has used for decades.
The Blazer was introduced in 1969 as a blocky two-door SUV and able to compete with the Ford Bronco. It was sold in three generations until 1995, when it was replaced by the Tahoe, but the name returned in 2019 for a conventional-fuel crossover with much less utilitarian billing.
The new electric Blazer — described by GM Chairman Mark Reuss as “an affordable, high-volume entry” into the electric vehicle market — bears no relation to its gasoline-powered namesake.
The single image posted by Barra reveals how radically different the two cars will be in terms of design: the electric vehicle is lower and has a larger space between the axles, its sides are more heavily sculpted and it has a wraparound light bar distinctive and a luminous badge. before.
The model pictured is the performance-focused SS, which is likely to pack the power and performance figures needed to rival the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT, no doubt thanks to a very taut twin-motor setup, while more affordable variants will likely go on sale with a single-motor system.
GM didn’t give further details on Chevrolet’s third production all-electric car – after the Silverado pickup truck and Bolt sedan – but it’s expected to be among the first to use the Chevrolet’s groundbreaking new third-generation EV platform. company and be equipped with the same Ultium battery technology as the GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq.
That means it’ll feature 800V fast-charging hardware for up to 350kW of charging and will almost certainly exceed the 300-mile range of the 4.1-ton Hummer EV.
Barra promised more details and photos of the Blazer EV during a July 18 full reveal, before it goes on sale in the United States next spring.
Five years after the sale of sister brands Opel and Vauxhall to the PSA Group (since subsumed into Stellantis), GM has no large-scale retail operation in place in Europe. The Chevrolet Corvette supercar is the company’s only model to be sold in right-hand drive in the UK.
However, Barra recently told US outlet CNBC that GM could return to Europe as an “all-EV player” and even went so far as to say she was “looking forward to this”, suggesting that the Blazer could coming to Europe – where it would be shaking up the highly competitive and rapidly expanding segment of EV crossovers – after all.
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Source: www.autocar.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-06-13 16:42:44
