Chevy's EV Race Truck Did What Ford's Failed To (But It's Not The Pickup You Think)

Over the past few years, multiple drive programs for the Hummer and Silverado EVs left me with similar conclusions. These massive electric vehicles deliver impressive engineering, serious performance, and legit range, even if the question of why the world needed such enormous EVs in the first place still stands as a legitimate quandary.

Now Chevrolet has taken the next step by introducing a race-spec Silverado EV ZR2 prototype. The debut this past week followed up Ford's F-150 Lightning Switchgear concept by more than a year, but that truck broke at King of the Hammers before I got to take a ride. By contrast, Chevy unveiled the new EV ZR2 and rather than scheduling media test drives, dove straight into the fire of competition by entering the Mint 400 off-road race.

Other than a bright blue livery—which OEMs apparently equate with EVs for no apparent reason—rather than the Chad Hall Racing Team's typical red wrap jobs, this ZR2's biggest question also comes down to weight. A press release claims that the build uses 98% stock General Motors parts, and most of the rest comes courtesy of Multimatic's prototype ASV electrically adjustable shock dampers.

Those Multimatics step up from the purely mechanical dampers of the ICE ZR2 lineup because this truck quite literally weighs 10,000 pounds with three humans and gear packed inside. Just like a Hummer EV. And it's got three motors—again, just like a Hummer EV. In fact, Engineering Group Manager Tim Demetrio admitted that beneath the Silverado EV's body and interior, his team essentially swapped in the entire battery and motor cradle from a Hummer.

That means 1,100 horsepower on tap, but as much as power figures make for headlines, everybody on hand at the Mint 400 waited with bated breath, anxiously wondering whether the suspension might survive the race while managing so much sheer weight. The safety equipment—a roll cage mandated by Mint 400 rules, plus a halon fire suppression system that Demetrio hoped would give the driver and crew time to get away in the case of a "thermal event"—explain part of the heft. But the Hummer EV pickup alone weighs 9,900 pounds in stock form already. Plus, the Hummer's longer-travel air suspension system includes control arms that can handle 13 inches of travel.

In this application, the Silverado EV ZR2 swaps out the Hummer's air bags for dual-rate coil springs plus the Multimatics. I dropped my head below the front and rear bumpers, not particularly low actually, to check out the setup as Demetrio rattled off specs and stats.

"Multimatic has been looking for a good opportunity to showcase the ASV adaptive spool valve in an off-road space," he said. "This gives us a really focused application, kind of an extreme case, a big heavy vehicle but we can really push it the way we do our production ICE road stuff. And this was a good opportunity to get learnings on them in a not-production environment, but a real-world worst-case use case."

I wanted to know the difference between the ASV system and the DSSVs that I'm more familiar with. Any similarities to Ferrari's Purosangue, or even WEC cars?

"It's still the DSSV underlying piston and technology, but with an adaptive valve around it," Demetrio explained. "So it basically can change the shape of the port window on the fly in real time. We can control it with pitch and roll, and vehicle input such as acceleration and braking. Each damper has an accelerometer in it, so it's looking at what the corners do in real time."

This electric ZR2 also borrows the Multimatic hydraulic jounce control bumpers from the Bison lineup. And I asked about rear-wheel steering, remembering the Hummer's crab walk function, but Demetrio admitted that given so much weight and the unknown dynamics of racing in the dirt, he decided to lock the rear tie rods in a static position.

One detail that surprised me? Where EVs typically afford manufacturers improved driving dynamics despite additional weight, while off-road racing, keeping the center of gravity so centrally located actually contributes to additional porpoising and side-to-side body roll. Trying to splay mass further out toward the edges actually helps to keep the chassis more stable—hence why some of the spare tires on other race trucks hang fully off the tail.

Range also stood out as a serious question, something I learned the week before while ice drifting Polestars around a frozen lake in Northern Sweden. There, full-throttle performance would drain a battery's state of charge by about half in just 25 minutes. But Demetrio told me that in limited testing, since the truck only hit the dirt for the first time two weeks prior (including press and promo content production), the Hummer EV's trio of motors and batteries never seemed overly stressed. Logically, caring about surviving the race and keeping the suspension alive took priority, so Chad Hall seemed unlikely to hit anywhere near the full 1,100 horsepower output very often.

"We know what we have to do with hardware," Demetrio admitted. "But there's a lot of things to do when you get over the EV side. It's a lot of software-based controls and calibrations..."

He still believed 1,100 horsepower will come in handy on race day, though.

"It's actually shown way more beneficial than I think any of us could ever thought. You know, on a desert race course, it goes bump, bump, bump, then smooth, and you can hit it and the step change in speed you're get out of this vehicle, it's like 30 to 60 miles an hour, bam, right now. And that is a huge advantage. With more power, it's a lot faster and I think we're gonna see a lot higher average speeds than we kind of expected."

I wondered sort of vaguely whether the electric powertrain still used one-pedal regenerative braking, and how EV traction and stability control programming works in a race-day environment. And to his (and Chevy's) credit, Demetrio kept no secrets—again, some advantages to EVs stand out for off-road racing.

"For this race, we have all the typical stability control and traction control systems active," he said. "We still have the motor torque controls that are built in to prevent wheel flare. That stuff is still there and just because of the underlying motor control, we have a lot more refinement on a motor that's been at 10,000 RPM. We can control the motors a lot faster than the typical brake-based stability control system."

Still, Hall planned to drive somewhat conservatively, and Demetrio expected an average race pace in the realm of 30 or 35 miles an hour. In the EV Open class, the Silverado EV ZR2 would only do a single lap of about 73 miles, leading to an expected finish time of about two hours plus a few minutes. (Hall's team also planned to run the ICE Colorado and Silverado ZR2 trucks at much greater pace, for three laps, plus a spec trophy truck the following day for the full four laps.)

On race day, the blue EV launched off the elevated start line next to a Rivian R1T that took on the same single lap the year previous. The R1T also formerly competed at Pikes Peak with former owner Gardner Nichols behind the wheel, but this time around, the Mint 400's organizers stipulated two laps since the truck completed one successfully in 2024. Perhaps hoping to save more battery, due to the clear need to stop for a charge between laps, the Rivian gave up ground immediately to the Chad Hall.

Of course, the Chevy featured 37-inch BFGoodrich KM3 tires and much more suspension travel, while the Rivian essentially received a cage and some 35-inch BFGs. Over the first few berms and tables, the pace looked set, before I rushed back to my own Silverado EV LT (on city tires) to try and catch some pit action or fly-bys out in the desert.

The Mint 400 provides a unique experience for spectators, since the lap format helps to reduce the lack of visibility for most off-road racing. But the Silverado EV ZR2 only planned to do one lap, so I needed to push the LT hard along roughly graded roads to keep up. Sure enough, I arrived at the first pits near race mile 21 after the ICE Colorado and Silverado had already passed by, but just a minute or two before the EV pulled through. 

I heard the Hall team call out 76% charge, which sounded good considering the truck started off with about 96%. With no tire change or maintenance needed, Hall cruised on by. Once again, I hopped back in my LT to hustle onto the next pit stop, just in time to spot the Rivian a minute or so back making a stop already.

This time, ripping down to the Gonzo pits in the hope of spotting all three trucks in action, I hauled around pickup trucks and campers and support vehicles—enjoying the instantaneous torque and even the standard suspension, plus the LT's 22-inch wheels versus the RST First Edition's egregious 24-inchers. At Gonzo, I drove up and down the line of support crews, but couldn't spot the Hall trucks. Maybe we beat them? Then the Colorado came through, as somebody hollered the ICE Silverado had already passed. That makes no sense, though.

Over the radio, we heard the EV had just passed race mile 30, which suggested about 20 more miles til it reached us. The pace seemed to be slowing for everybody, maybe, and we kept an eye out for the ICE Silverado just in case. Maybe 30 seconds later, the EV drove by, just a minute or two behind the Colorado. Without anybody to quiz, I wondered whether the Hall team told the Colorado to pace the EV just in case, in the name of support for this PR campaign. But with no time to stop and think, I rushed back to the start-finish to catch the end of the first lap.

Once again, I missed the Silverado passing, but spotted the Colorado trundling through. Something must be wrong, clearly. But the whole Chevy team showed a bit more nerves awaiting the EV, as side-by-sides and Class 11 Bugs rolled by. The range, weight, suspension, tires—all of everyone's hidden doubts came to the fore, until finally the EV crossed the finish line with a little hop. Final time? Two hours and 10 minutes, for an average speed right around 34 miles per hour. Huzzah!

Another moment of fear passed when the temporary podium erected out of sorry-looking plywood and cheap sheet metal flexed and creaked with the weight of the first finisher's 10,000 pounds. Chad Hall himself kept a business face on, and passed up spraying any champagne because he planned to hop in the Colorado for another stint, but everybody else from Chevrolet—especially Demetrio—looked exceptionally stoked.

I stopped by the main pits to check out the EV shortly thereafter, that blue wrap now sprayed with mud and grit, plus a few twigs and plenty of bug guts. Somehow, this massive beast survived such a grueling first race, and the battery still even showed 40% remaining. In a quick debrief while scarfing down some food, Hall admitted to holding back on the straights at first, then dogfighting and baiting a bit with the Rivian in the name of saving precious electrons.

He also commented that the tri-motors probably needed a bit more "throttle" modulation, to prevent wheelslip at initial tip-in, but that once he felt confident in the range, that immediate acceleration up to 80 or 90 miles per hour simply gapped the whole field. Of course, the name of the game was "wreckers or checkers" since a mechanical failure topped the list of worst things every PR professional on hand feared. Crashing spectacularly or winning outright (albeit in a class of one) fit the bill much better.

Of course, the PR spin in the case of a mechanical seemed easy, too: "Unlike Ford, at least we had the courage to start, risking a facepalm moment, because we wanted to test and trial and benchmark before producing an electric ZR2 for the public." Yet the ZR2 race truck's announcement only included the debut of a road-going Trail Boss trim, not a ZR2, which adds a few goodies and a couple of inches of lift. Even that prospect seems dubious to me, though, since approximately zero percent of nobody who wants to do any serious off-roading will buy these trucks.

Instead, the Trail Boss seems more like an appearance package, similar to the Hummer EV's M/T tires. Then again, this ZR2 racer finished in one piece, with plenty of range left, proving once more that Multimatic's spool valves seem as capable as the ICE ZR2s, Ferraris, and WEC cars suggest.

On the other hand, I spied a little hidden detail that cast a pallor on the whole experiment: despite the ICE Colorado wearing Multimatic stickers, the truck actually rode on Fox shock dampers (plus new 37-inch tires). I asked Demetrio for a little clarification about the change, which took place at this year's King of the Hammer's race.

"We're here in the desert to learn things," he responded, with a PR pro waiting at his elbow to jump in if necessary. "The tires were a rule change for the class for 2025. Some of our competitors came from the factory with 37s, so we said 'If they're gonna run with it, I would like the entire rule book opened up to anything in our class to have 37s.'"

Alright, so Ford's Raptors clearly dictated the change. But how much better did the Colorado do at KoH?

"We're still looking at what we see," Demetrio replied coyly, avoiding the subject. "There's some learnings there, there's some improvements. Again, that's why we're trying some other things here, it's a big learning playground."

Benchmarking, testing, trying new things. At King of the Hammers, the Colorado excelled but apparently, the Fox dampers struggled at the Mint—which explains why the Silverado jumped out full minutes ahead despite typically lagging behind. Whether or not Chevrolet actually decides to ditch Multimatic in the future, I still believe both Fox and Multimatic produce excellent options for road and racing applications alike. Case in point, the Ford Raptors—but also the Switchgear. Hopefully Ford gets the memo and decides to do some real racing in the future.

For simplicity's sake, I always prefer fewer electronics. Does that also apply to an advanced EV in the first place? Well, some loose wires and clearly jury-rigged electrical gizmos underneath the Silverado EV ZR2 hint at a bit of Mickey Mouse construction while shoehorning the Hummer batteries and motors into a Silverado, then swapping out the air suspension for the ASV system. And the Rivian needed to swap out an air shock while charging between laps at an Electrify America station in Primm, right on the California border. Yet the Multimatics still handled a crazy 10,000-pound race truck, as it exceeded expectations by a long shot over the course of 73 grueling miles of competition out in the desert.