A 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV just broke the record for the longest EV range on a single charge.
The Silverado EV Work Truck with the biggest available battery covered 1059.2 miles, more than twice the truck's 493-mile EPA-estimated range.
Chevy's team used typical hypermiling techniques, including taking it slow, really slow.
The Tortoise and the Hare is one of humanity's oldest stories, and yet its simple lesson still carries weight: don't get cocky, just go the distance. Well, that's what GM has just done with the Chevy Silverado EV, racking up more than double the truck's estimated EPA range and setting a new record for distance traveled on a single charge. How'd the engineers do it? By putting on their turtle thinking hats and hitting the road.
With a total distance of 1059.2 miles driven on public roads around GM's proving grounds in Milford, Michigan, and on nearby Belle Isle in Detroit, the Silverado EV's feat blows way past the previous record, set by a Lucid Air Grand Touring just last month. The old record was 749 miles, following a path between St. Moritz in Switzerland and Munich in Germany, a route you might drive if you are a bit of a fancy pants.
The Silverado's path was more suitable to its blue-collar intended audience, the kind of journey you might take in a landscaping or municipal work truck. In fact, GM used the electric Silverado's fleet-focused Work Truck trim fitted with the available 205-kWh Max battery, the largest available capacity. GM optimized aerodynamics and weight by adding a tonneau cover and removing the spare tire, dialed in the optimum alignment, and even went so far as to adjust the wiper angle for minimal drag. Engineers also inflated the tires to 80 psi, the maximum allowable pressure. If that tidbit has you thinking that you haven't checked your tire pressures in a bit, go top them up immediately. It's the cheapest and easiest thing you can do to cut down on your fuel bill or to effectively add range to your car's battery.
GM says 40 engineers volunteered for the range attempt, and they suffered a bit for it. It took a full seven days of driving in summer heat. In order to eke out every last mile, the drivers didn't use the air conditioning. When we conduct our own real-world EV range test, we set the automatic climate control to 72 degrees and set the cruise control to 75 mph on our out-and-back highway loop. We tested a 2024 Silverado EV RST, which went 400 miles on a single charge, putting it second on our list of longest-range electric cars.
If you're doing the math on 1059.2 miles over seven days with a puzzled look on your face, then yes, this distance was covered slowly. Very slowly. Wherever possible, speeds of 20 to 25 mph were held constant, with no hard acceleration or braking. Basically, some tortoise-like hypermiling. In our recent test to see how speed affects EV range, increasing from 35 mph—our testers expressed boredom even doing short stints at this velocity—to 75 mph resulted in roughly half the range.
Silverado EV owners won't always be able—or want—to roll this slow, but it does show what the truck is capable of when squeezing the most out of every electron in a miserly fashion. The official EPA estimated range is 493 miles, so let this be an Aesop's Fable for the modern era. Slow and steady wins the race yet again.
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