It has huge electric range. It can power your tools, or even your house. It has a convincingly luxurious interior for its nearly $100,000 price tag and comes out of the gate with some of the best automated driving features around right now—no updates necessary. And while it’s brand new—available on dealer lots in owners’ driveways as you read this—it’s not known to have left anyone maimed from its frunk or body panels.
So is the 2024 GMC Sierra EV the truck the Tesla Cybertruck should’ve been? After just a few hours in one, I’m starting to think so. At the very least, it just Crabwalked to the front of the pack of the modern electric supertruck race.
Still, GMC’s entry into this field is a big, heavy truck that depends on a big, heavy battery, and that remains controversial in the EV world. Is the Sierra EV good enough to prove that this approach works?
(Full Disclosure: GMC invited me to Detroit to test the Sierra EV and provided travel, food and lodging.)
2024 GMC Sierra EV Denali Edition 1
What Is It?
General Motors’ approach to EVs, so far, has been to offer electric versions—or close analogues—of the gas-powered vehicles that its customers know and love. It’s why Chevrolet makes a gas and electric Equinox, Blazer and Silverado, even though those vehicles are completely unrelated beyond their names and general sizes.
All use versions of the same electric architecture and family of batteries called Ultium, adapted for different use cases, prices and sizes, which helps GM achieve the elusive manufacturing scale needed to make EVs profitably.
It stands to reason, then, why the GMC Sierra EV exists: It’s basically an upgraded and more luxurious take on the Silverado EV that I first tested this spring.
I wasn’t a great fan of that truck. Though more affordable variants are supposedly coming, the Silverado EV RST First Edition (what a name) I drove came in at $96,395. That felt like a lot to ask for a truck that—despite its impressive range and clever features—still had a bowtie badge and an interior lifted straight from an Equinox EV that costs half as much.
The Sierra EV pulls it all off better. It’s no exercise in badge engineering. The designs are totally different, sharing no body panels except for rear doors, according to GMC. The interiors are different, with the Sierra EV offering thicker glass for a quieter cabin and nicer leather and more upscale-feeling materials.
The infotainment setup is different, too, with a portrait-style screen and different physical interfaces than the Silverado EV’s landscape setup (and the operating system itself is skinned differently). It keeps the excellent four-wheel-steering system from the Silverado EV but adds the “Crabwalk” function from the GMC Hummer EV in case you ever need to slide diagonally into a parking space.
The idea is that if you’re the guy who owns the ranch or owns the construction company—the kind of person GMC aims Denali trucks at—then this truck can do everything your gas-powered truck can do and more, with battery power alone.
The luxury pretenses mean it’s not cheap. The launch edition truck I drove in Detroit—a Sierra EV Denali Edition 1, the only such truck currently on sale for the 2024 model year—is loaded. GMC offers no options on the Edition 1, but the truck comes in at $97,500. Add in the requisite destination fees and it’s $99,495. Given the scant price difference between the two, I can’t fathom why you’d go for the lesser Silverado EV instead.
This would be a different conversation if a Chevy Silverado EV were, say, $65,000. But as of right now, it’s not, so the GMC version understood the assignment.
What Are The Specs?
The Sierra EV Denali Edition 1 gets the same 200+ kWh battery pack as the Silverado EV and GMC Hummer EV Pickup/SUV models. GM is weird in that it doesn’t like to disclose the actual battery sizes of its EVs (I don’t get this, either) but a smaller, possibly 170 kWh battery pack is rumored to be offered later.
Going with a battery more than twice the size of the one in an Equinox EV has its tradeoffs. They require more raw materials to make, need more energy to charge up and add a weight penalty that puts this truck somewhere over 9,000 pounds. It’s not terribly efficient, and plenty of critics say that while it avoids tailpipe emissions entirely it’s hardly the most environmentally friendly way to build an EV.
But GM says its truck customers want range—especially if they’re out on a job site or off-roading and can’t charge for days—and a big battery is one way to do it. The GMC Sierra EV offers a GM-estimated 440 miles of range, which handily trumps the similarly priced Cybertruck, Rivian R1T and Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum. In fact, it and the Silverado EV are among the longest-driving EVs of any form factor on sale right now, second only to versions of the Lucid Air.
The other specs are equally impressive. The dual motors put down 754 horsepower—making it the most powerful Sierra ever—and 785 lb-ft of torque. The truck is rated to tow up to 10,000 pounds and haul up to 1,450 pounds of payload.
The gas-powered GMC Sierra 1500 can tow far more than this—up to 13,000 pounds with the 6.2-liter V-8—but that’s contingent on a “Max Trailering Package” that isn’t offered on the Denali. That means the maximum tow rating for a similar gas-powered truck is actually lower, at 8,900 pounds. The gas Denali can haul more, though, with a maximum payload of 1,710 pounds. In either metric, Tesla has the electric GMC beat, at least officially. Tesla says the Cybertruck can tow 11,000 pounds and haul a staggering 2,500 pounds.
But here’s where GMC one-ups Tesla: up to 10.2 kW of generator power, enough to run a house for a claimed 21 days; seven power outlets that include 120V and 240V plugs, 11 cubic feet of storage space in the frunk and almost 11 feet of bed length with the trick Multi-Pro Midgate fully open. And the number of failures we’ve seen with the Cybetruck so far gives us pause that it will be able to tow and haul thousands of pounds repeatedly, and for years, the way a GMC can—and GM’s trucks seem able to tow with better overall range than Tesla’s truck.
How Does It Drive?
Immediately, I liked driving the Sierra EV in ways I didn’t care for the Silverado EV. For all its size and heft, it’s a shockingly nimble machine thanks to the four-wheel-steering setup (which can be toggled on command.) It’s also respectably quick, with a zero to 60 mph time under 4.5 seconds, and a “Max Power” setting—or as GMC’s engineers call it, “Thor’s Hammer”—that uncorks the full juice in ordinary driving. It jumps from 30 mph to 70 mph quicker than I expected.
Additional dedicated modes that adjust the truck’s power output, stability control tuning, air suspension and more include Off-Road and Tow/Haul. The latter offers extra oomph, an accelerator pedal that’s easier to use and optimized steering and damper settings.
Towing range depends on what you’re pulling, of course, but GMC says to expect about half the normal range—just like a gas truck might offer. Still, some engineers told me that they’ve seen over 300 miles of range towing various things, which I’d love to experience for myself soon.
But what impressed me the most was how quiet it was. That thicker glass and the improvements to noise, vibration and harshness do make the Sierra EV a legit luxury truck, and a far more pleasant place to spend time than the Silverado EV.
What’s Good?
The Sierra EV's overall design clicks well. The giant shield grille gives it that subtle “I’m an EV” look without being too shouty about it.
On the inside, it’s as nice and premium as any other GMC Denali truck or SUV I’ve driven. The leather’s nice, the ash wood dash textures are lovely and the steering wheel alone is a cut above what Chevy offers you. The center screen is different here as well, being a 16.8-inch portrait-style tablet now. GMC’s reskinned version of the standard operating system has its own vibe but remains fully customizable so you can put whatever menus wherever you need them to go.
I have to give props to the Multi-Pro Midgate, which comes standard here. Like the Silverado EV, it’s a Chevy Avalanche-style setup that lets you drop the wall behind the rear seats in various ways to access the bed directly. Fold the rear seats down and you get up to 10 feet and 10 inches of total bed space, made possible thanks in large part to having fewer mechanical components compared to an ICE truck. Putting all of that down could be a two-person job, including removing the rear glass, but I did it by myself several times. It adds a lot of character to the truck.
Finally, there’s Super Cruise. It lets you go hands-free on 400,000 miles of North American mapped highways provided you keep your eyes on the road, works while towing and has hands-free trailering. I’ve used this on the Silverado EV and it’s quite impressive; that alone gives it a huge edge over the Cybertruck. For now, at least.
What’s Bad?
We’ve been adamant that GM’s new Google-based operating system is a promising one, but for some buyers, nothing is ever going to make up for the lack of Apple CarPlay. Your call if that’s a dealbreaker or not. Same with the Thunderstorm Gray color. It’s the only color you can have for 2024, but more are coming.
Also, this is an expensive truck. That’s not shocking because most in the electric segment are, but it also precludes the Sierra EV from any tax credits if you purchase it (leased vehicles are not subject to the credit’s price cap). I hope GM has a more affordable electric truck option in store for us someday, but today is not that day.
How Is It As An EV?
We’ve been impressed with GM’s do-over year on the EV front in 2024, scoring some real home runs with cars like the Equinox EV and Cadillac Lyriq. Likewise, the Sierra EV feels like an effort from a car company that’s really serious about the electric race. You get multiple levels of one-pedal driving, as well as the familiar steering wheel paddle that engages full regenerative braking.
The Google-powered software suite is first-rate when it comes to route planning and finding chargers, and the vehicle-to-load (V2L) capabilities are among the best out there. That battery is huge, and it works well as a mobile powerplant.
Having said that, I have my concerns about charging here—concerns I didn’t get to test myself amid a few hours in Detroit for this test. (In part, this is because the damn thing has so much range that getting it down to 20% or less for a DC fast-charging test would’ve taken longer than I had.)
GMC claims that the truck can load up 100 miles of range in 10 minutes on a 350 kW DC fast charger. It makes the same claim about the Hummer EV, but that was decidedly not my experience with one recently (which I will cover in an upcoming review.) On that truck, the most I ever pulled was 175 kW—including at GM-branded 350 kW stations. Broadly speaking, we’ve seen very mixed results with GM’s fast charging; in the Hummer EV’s case, the automaker said the chargers I used may not have had the most up-to-date software, but I think this may be more of a pervasive issue than that.
It’s also only fair to note that the Silverado EV has acquitted itself well at the DC stations. Still, we won’t render a final verdict until we try it for ourselves.
Level 2 home charging might be tough too, another tradeoff for this battery size. GMC doesn’t offer an estimate, but a 200 kWh battery pack charging on a 7.4 kW home plug like the one in my garage would, in theory, take some 20 hours to go from low to fully charged.
Fortunately, GMC sells these beefed-up home Level 2 plugs that can deliver up to 11.5KW when hard-wired; it’s a shame it’s not included with the truck, but it’s probably worth the investment for quicker home recharging.
Efficiency isn’t great, either; on average, I did about 2 miles per kWh, which is quite low. During his time with the Cybertruck, Deputy Editor Mack Hogan averaged between 2.2 and 2.35 miles per kWh.
Early Verdict
The jury’s still out on whether this “big battery” approach to trucks is the right one, if there is a “right” one. Maybe it’s better to focus on battery chemistry, aerodynamics and motor efficiency; maybe it’s hybrid trucks instead, as Ford has indicated recently.
But the GMC Sierra EV is the best application of the big-battery theory I’ve experienced yet. It’s got the frunk, the range, the features, the V2L charging, the automated driving tech and the flashy looks you want, without the… baggage, let’s say, of a certain competitor from Tesla. And more than that, it’s a worthy, if not better, adversary to the Rivian R1T and something that makes any F-150 Lightning past $90,000 or so feel irrelevant.
Gallery: 2024 GMC Sierra EV First Drive
If you’re willing to spend nearly six figures on a kind of electric supercar of trucks, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than the Sierra EV—for now, anyway. If history has taught us anything about the truck wars, it’s that they’re built on escalation. And in the EV world, that war is barely getting started.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
