The Chevrolet Silverado EV 4WT, the variant with the 24-module large battery pack shared with the GMC Hummer EV, has the highest claimed peak charging power of any EV currently available in the US. The manufacturer says this EV with an EPA range of 450 miles can draw up to 350 kilowatts from a sufficiently powerful charger, but during a recent independent charging session, it exceeded that value and showed remarkable consistency throughout its charging curve.
Out of Spec Reviews charged a Silverado EV 4WT from flat, and it immediately started drawing the advertised maximum of 350 kW after it had been previously preconditioned. Early on in the charging session, the station indicated that the vehicle was pulling over 360 kW, although the truck never showed that it was taking more than 349–350 kW—most of the difference is most likely represented by charging losses.
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The GMC Hummer EV and Chevrolet Silverado EV have the highest claimed charging power of any EVs on the market and they live up to the impressive advertised figures when charged in real-world conditions.
The most impressive part of this charging session is not the peak charging speed it achieved, but its consistency. It kept charging at over 340 kW until it reached a 30% state of charge, then it started to go down, but it still stayed above 220 kW until hitting 75%. Even after that point, the charging power was still impressive, and it was still pulling at least 50 kW even after 90%.
It took just over one hour and 15 minutes to take the Silverado EV’s 200+ kilowatt-hour battery from flat to full, which is very good given the fact that it has about twice the capacity of a big electric SUV like a Mercedes EQS. It’s also way ahead of all other electric pickups from other manufacturers when it comes to how many miles of range it can replenish in a given time frame—one of the graphs they show in the video really puts this into context.
What is even more interesting about the Silverado EV is that it can charge this quickly even though it doesn’t natively run at 800 volts, a trait that is typically associated with the quickest-charging EVs. However, it has what is known as a split battery pack, essentially two 400-volt packs that under normal operation are linked in parallel, but for charging, the vehicle hooks them up in series to double the voltage and charge very quickly.
