Fastest Corvette Ever is all-wheel-drive gas-electric Hybrid

Fastest Corvette Ever is all-wheel-drive gas-electric Hybrid

DETROIT (AP) — The fastest Corvette ever made comes out later this year, and it’s not powered solely by a howling V8.

The E-Ray is a gas electric hybrid, the first all-wheel-drive version of Chevrolet’s storied sports car with the front wheels running on an electric motor the traditional 6.2-liter V8 powering the back.

Aimed at affluent buyers who want new technology in the top-line Chevrolet sports car, the $104,000 E-Ray jerks your head back as it goes from zero to 60 mph (97 kilometers per hour) in 2.5 seconds. General Motors says it can cover a quarter mile in 10.5 seconds.

Although those figures are slightly faster than its race track-ready brothers, the Z06 and Z07, it’s civil enough for the daily commute even though its rear tires are almost wide enough to compete in the Indianapolis 500.

Tadge Juechter, the Corvette’s executive chief engineer, said people would ask for the best version of the car, only to wind up a “track monster” that they’re trying to drive every day. “For the same money you can get all-wheel-drive, and comfort, security, and the livability that comes with a car like this,” he said. “We’ve really divided the family into pure track and to everyday utility.”

The E-Ray, which is being unveiled exactly 70 years after the first Corvette was introduced in New York back in 1953, is a step toward an all-electric version of the car that will come out at at unspecified date.

Although GM may be over-selling the practicality, the E-Ray does come with all-season tires so it can be driven year-round, and the all-wheel-drive system is configured so it’s confident in the snow, up to just 4 inches due to its low ground clearance.

“This is going to propel the Corvette to a new set of markets,” said Mark Wakefield, global co-leader of automotive for the consulting firm AlixPartners.

As performance cars go, the Corvette always has been more practical than most, with storage space in the hatch and the front trunk, said Sam Abuelsamid, e-Mobility analyst for Guidehouse Research. “It is actually surprisingly liveable,” he said, conceding that someone buying a sports car costing over $100,000 probably has another vehicle in their garage for the daily drive.

Unlike most hybrids, it’s not really made for efficiency, although will get a little better city mileage than a standard Stingray at 16 mpg. But because of higher mass and air drag, it will do worse than the standard Corvette’s 24 mpg on the highway. The electric motor adds 160 horsepower to the 495 generated by the V8, for a total of 655. Both systems come on at once for maximum acceleration.

Engineers say its technology sets the stage for the all-electric Corvette. When the latest generation of ’Vette came out four years ago with the engine in the middle, engineers designed it so there could be hybrid and electric versions in the future.

This version of the Corvette, code named “C9,” may be the last one to have a gasoline engine, in light of GM’s plans to sell only electric passenger vehicles by 2035, Abuelsamid said. But he sees this version evolving at least through the end of the decade.

The E-Ray’s computers are configured to keep it stable by applying power to individual wheels when it’s slippery. GM engineers say most electronic stability controls rely on braking individual wheels. It’s a lot of engineering work for a niche product, but GM says knowledge from developing the car will show up in other vehicles. GM sold only 34,510 Corvettes last year.

“I think the blending of the motor control and brake control is something that they’ll be able to apply to the EVs,” Abuelsamid said.

The 1.9 kilowatt-hour battery is small compared with a full electric vehicle. It’s positioned under the console. You can’t plug it in to recharge it, but it gets energy restored from regenerative braking and from the V8 motor. It can be driven in “stealth mode” up to 45 mph for about two miles to quietly leave a neighborhood, GM says.

“As fast as you can discharge it, we recharge it, and we always keep it at a pretty optimum state of charge,” said Mike Kutcher, lead development engineer for the E-Ray.

The E-Ray will hit showrooms sometime during the second half of this year as a 2024 model, GM said.

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The Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray is the First-ever Hybrid Corvette

Exactly 70 years after the very first Chevrolet Corvette was unveiled in January, 1953, General Motors revealed the first Corvette with an electric motor on Tuesday. The front wheels of the 2024 Corvette E-Ray are powered by a 160 horsepower electric motor, while a 495 horsepower V8 gasoline engine powers the back wheels.

With a maximum power output of 655 horsepower, the E-Ray is also the fastest-accelerating Corvette model ever, able to go from a stop to 60 miles an hour in 2.5 seconds. The name E-Ray, from the electric ray sea creature, is a play on the Stingray name of the base model. The electric vehicle even has a distinctively designed ray-shaped badge on the trunk’s lid.

The Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray is 3.6 inches wider than the base model.

Unlike some other high-performance hybrid cars, the Corvette E-ray is not a plug-in hybrid. Its 1.9 kilowatt-hour battery pack, mounted in a tunnel that runs between the two seats, is charged as the car slows and brakes and, at times, while the car drives.

GM has not shared fuel economy estimates for the E-Ray, but the engineering emphasis has clearly been placed on maximizing performance rather than fuel economy. Still, the E-Ray produces only 15 horsepower less than the top of the line 670-horsepower Corvette Z06, with its high-revving V8 engine and will, no doubt, get much better than that car’s EPA-estimated 15 miles per gallon.

The standard Corvette Stingray, with its 495 horsepower engine and no electric motor, gets about 19 miles per gallon. Even the non-hybrid Corvette’s V8 engine is capable of operating only four cylinders at times when full power isn’t needed. By taking some of the work load, the E-Ray’s electric motor will allow the V8 to operate in its 4-cylinder mode more often, Corvette development engineer Steve Padilla said.

A button inside the cabin of the Corvette E-Ray changes how the car’s electric motor is used. The E-Ray can even drive for a couple of miles using only the electric motor in case the owner wants to, say, drive through the neighborhood quietly early in the morning before firing up the loud internal combustion engine. This is only possible for, at most, three to four miles, though.

As required by safety regulations, the E-Ray produces a sound — a low, oscillating whirr — through external speakers when driving under electric power at low speeds. The car can also be set to charge the battery as the car drives if the driver wants to build battery power for later use.

The hybrid Corette E-Ray has special screen displays to track the operation of the electric motor.

For race track driving, the hybrid system can be set for maximum short-term performance, allowing the lithium battery to use up most of its charge in a lap or two, or for more conservative, lap-after-lap use. The car will maintain a certain minimal state of charge in case it needs to use the front electric motor to help pull out of a skid, for instance. In general, though, the E-Ray isn’t seen as a track car. That’s more what the Z06 is for, said Padilla. The E-Ray is intended as a car for fast street driving and long road trips.

“in the past, when you moved up from the Stingray, if you wanted something higher up, we’ve always provided, the racing, you know the supercars,” Padilla said, “We’ve had the Z06, the ZR1. This takes it in a little bit of a different direction.”

Carbon ceramic brakes are standard on the E-Ray. Carbon ceramic brake rotors are more resistant to “fade,” or loss of braking performance as the brakes heat up in hard use, compared to ordinary metal brake rotors. They are also lighter than metal rotors, something that was important in this case because of the added weight of the battery pack and electric motor.

While fuel economy is secondary to performance in the Corvette E-Ray, it is expected to be more efficient than other Corvette models.

The current generation of the Corvette, the first with its engine behind the seats instead of under the hood, was engineered from the outset with this new hybrid version in mind. That means the Corvette’s front trunk, a practical feature that helps give the car more storage space than most mid-engined sports cars, is still there in the E-Ray.

The E-Ray shares a lot of its exterior body with the extra-wide Corvette Z06, and for the same reasons. The extra horsepower demands wider tires for more traction and better handling at high speeds. Plus the extra width allows for larger side air intakes to draw in more air for the gasoline engine. The E-Ray is supposed to be a somewhat more mellow car, though, so the trim pieces around the edges of the side scoops, which are colored black on the Z06, are the same color as the rest of the body on the E-Ray.

The Corvette E-Ray will go on sale later this year at a sticker price starting at $104,300, or $111,300 for convertible models with a power-folding hard top. Prices for the Corvette Stingray base model start at about $64,500 and, for the Z06, at about $105,300. Padilla compared the Corvette E-Ray’s pricing to cars like the McLaren Artura, a plugin hybrid supercar with maximum 671 horsepower output and only rear-wheel-drive. Prices for the McLaren start at $225,500. Also, the Ferrari 296 GTB, another plug-in hybrid supercar, has prices starting at $323,000, but total horsepower output of 819.

Unlike those cars, the Corvette E-Ray is not a plug-in hybrid because GM product planners and engineers didn’t want the potential complication or confusion of having a charging port on the car, Padilla said.

Adding a charging port and additional cables and electronics to the car would have also added weight, said Steve Majoros, marketing director for Chevrolet. The E-Ray weighs only about 200 pounds more than the Stingray, according to GM.

GM has said that it plans to produce only zero-emission passenger vehicles by 2035, a pledge that implies a fully electric Corvette must be offered at some point if the model line is not to die out.

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