In case you live under a rock, you may not have realized that the Chevy Corvette has a new model out: in the form of an electric vehicle. It’s called the E-Ray and it’s taking the streets, quite literally, by storm! How so? Well, besides the initial delight in the novelty of electric powertrains, the Chevy Corvette E-Ray offers some groundbreaking results that maybe some of it’s predecessors could only dream of. For instance, this is one of the first Corvettes to feature both a hybrid engine output and AWD or all-wheel-drive.
Of course, the Chevy Corvette is much faster than any of the other electric vehicles in the market.
Which is amazing, as the Corvette sub-brand of Chevrolet has always excelled at being the sportiest of sports cars that you can purchase in an otherwise competitively slow marketplace. As there’s plenty to discover about the tech, one thing to remember is that the team at Chevrolet will and forever always make sure that the number one priority of the Corvette E-Ray will always drive like a Corvette. Some of the coolest features are very apparent from the get-go.
For starters, the E-Ray offers a 1.1 kilowatt hours battery made with lithium-ion to pump through the speedster’s veins. The pack has a good 80-count of refrigerant-chilled LG Chem pouch-like cells, as well as a liquid-cooled power inverter. To show how vested they were in the project, LG took it upon themselves to design the battery for specific capacity to discharge and recharge just as quickly, within a thermal state that could be monitored through new performance pages, all found in the infotainment screen. Chevrolet themselves are even more proud of the weight, being that it clocks in at around 100 pounds.
According to the pros at Corvette, the front-axle is able to handle the 80-pound permanent-magnet synchronous AC motor, capable of producing about 160 horsepower with 125 pound-feet of torque. Plus, a heat exchanger in the Corvette’s nose allows for the motor to stay cool. Combo this with the 495-horsepower 6.2-liter V-8 and you’ve got about 655 horses running all inside this vehicle. The E-Ray is a little limited at first in five-mile distance driving. But hit the accelerator fast enough and the V-8 will kick in above 45 miles per hour at least.
Plus, checking the speed, Chevrolet has made it well-known that the Corvette E-Ray arrives at 60 miles per hour at a whopping two and a half seconds. A quarter-mile? Easily cleared in only 10.5 seconds. While the top speed peaks above 180 miles per hour, it is quite impressive that it’s only until 150 miles per hour that the electric motor takes a break. Potentially, what that means is that you could be speeding down the highway at 149 miles per hour and be totally reliant on electricity for a while before it becomes inevitable to start running on gas. The E–Ray comes with carbon-ceramic brakes that are strong enough to handle the mass of the hybrid system at about a curb-stomping weight of 4,000 pounds.
