The Inconvenient Truth About Electric Vehicles
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During one of the high-dollar ad spots in last night’s Super Bowl, Will Ferrell plowed an electric GMC Sierra truck through Zack Snyder’s army of the dead. He then drove an electric Chevy Blazer into Squid Game and staged a getaway in a hulking EV Hummer. General Motors’ ad, the latest in a string of EV-touting, celebrity-laden Super Bowl commercials, hopes to paint the company’s battery-powered offerings as being just as rugged, capable, macho, and desirable as the big, petrol-powered trucks it has sold for decades. Here’s something the ad doesn’t tell you: How far those electric vehicles will go depends a lot on how much you can spend.
The basic, $45,000 version of Ferrell’s Blazer EV can drive $47,595 to get 290 miles of range or $51,995 to reach 320 miles. The gaudy $100,000 launch edition of GMC’s electric Sierra is rated for 400 miles, but the entry-level models of that truck are widely expected to have a diminished range to go with the price cut when they arrive. For the revived Hummer, too, driving range is an upsell. Eighty grand buys 250 miles, while spending six figures raises the range to 350.
