Chevrolet says coming 2024 Silverado EV base trim will start at $50,000

We'd ask you to imagine our surprise at finding out the 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV work truck in top-tier 4WT trim costs $79,800, but we know you don't have to imagine. Chevy caught us all off guard with that one. Even more surprising, the MSRP continues to be a moving target. Around the time we published our First Drive, Chevy updated the Silverado EV media page with new info about launch cadence and pricing. We're told that 2023 will see the already-discussed 4WT hit the market, the 3WT trim arriving "soon after" offering 350 miles of range, 100 fewer miles than the 4WT. For this year, those are going to be fleet-only options. The only retail model coming before New Year's is the RST First Edition. After the production ramp-up, Chevy will expand the possibilities for fleet and retail, and here's the key line: Buyers will be offered a truck "across various price ranges, with MSRPs starting from $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 and more, allowing them to choose the truck that meets their capability and pricing needs."

That seems reasonable to us. Sure, $52,000 (or so, after the $1,895 destination) isn't the roughly $42,000 truck we've been imagining for 18 months. However, considering the breadth and depth of absurdities going on in the transportation space, a $10,000 shift isn't bananas. It's one banana, maybe. We can't imagine why Chevy didn't share this update in bold print with every media attendee at the First Drive instead of letting them chew on what came across as a $40,000 "Gotcha!"

Adding more context, equipping an ICE-powered Silverado Crew Cab Work Truck with the 5.3-liter V8, standard bed, and four-wheel drive as close as we could get to the Silverado EV comes out to nearly $55,000. That narrows the difference between ICE and EV to nearly $25,000, or $20,000 for 3WT variant. The gap doesn't take into account that the ICE truck lacks the 510 horsepower and 615 pound-feet of torque in the EV, and features like the 7.2-kW of onboard power and multiple outlets in two voltages. And if you look askance at the interior of the EV, try checking out a 2023 Silverado WT cab. There's no navigation in there, you can't option it, and you wouldn't want it on a screen borrowed from a 2003 Blackberry, anyway.

We're not trying to justify the EV. Chevy's taken more than 185,000 reservations, and the buyers who want it know what makes sense for them. We're saying the numbers aren't as awful after adding up the pieces.

The real problem with the numbers is that we still don't know what they're going to be. If anyone believes they'll be able to buy a $52,000 Silverado EV WT in 2024 and have it delivered before the 2025, we have some questions for you. Chevy's head of truck marketing, Amy Masica, wouldn't give Automotive News the $50,000 MSRP figure on Chevy put on its media site. And we don't blame her, having watched execs at other automakers burned by quotes that couldn't weather the times. All she'd say about the entry-level trim is, "It's going to be the right content for a price leader. Affordability is still really important to Chevy." 

Yeah. "Affordability" doesn't mean what it meant 18 months ago, and we don't expect it to mean the same nine months from now, even less so come the 2025 model year if that's how long it takes the base model to roll out. The past few years should have proved to us that every MSRP is TBD until a vehicle is home in the driveway.

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