Silverado EV Trail Boss: Chevy’s Off-Road-Focused Electric Pickup

The 2024 Silverado EV is the talk of the automotive world this week. But the hotness flying under the radar is the off-road-focused Trail Boss version of the truck.

We talked a lot about the 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV Pickup in another story we published this week. But what we didn’t mention is the version of the truck that we really want for outdoor adventures — the Trail Boss.

Let’s first dive into the basics of what we know about this new big electric truck, and then what we know about the Trail Boss version.

2024 Silverado EV

Unlike the Ford Lighting EV, the Silverado EV is a clean-sheet design that shares nearly nothing with its dino-juice-powered sibling. Think of the 2024 Silverado EV as a mashup of a GMC Hummer EV and an old-school Chevy Avalanche.

It’s a very big truck, over 6 feet tall and 19 feet long, and has a 145.7-inch wheelbase. But it’s smaller than the Hummer EV and the Tesla Cybertruck.

The 2024 Silverado EV is only offered in a Crew Cab body style with a 5’11” truck bed — one inch longer than a gas Silverado and 4 inches longer than the Ford Lightning EV — which extends to more than 9 feet after opening the mid-gate.

Because there’s no engine, there’s also a huge, lockable, waterproof storage area up front (aka the frunk).

The base model is the Silverado EV WT, or Work Truck. Starting price for the WT comes in at $39,900, and it offers 510 horsepower and 615 pound-feet of torque.

The initial release top dog in the Silverado EV lineup will be the RST First Edition. The RST will set you back $105,000 but offers things like a full-glass roof, four-wheel steering, dual-motor AWD, and massive 24-inch wheels.

The Silverado EV RST will also have a 400-plus-mile range, a 1,300-pound payload capacity, 10,000-pound towing capacity, 664 horsepower, and 780 pound-feet of torque.

The WT is expected to hit the market in spring 2023, with the RST to follow in the fall. Chevy has already announced that once production is ramped up on those two models, many more will follow. The only other trim the automaker has officially announced is the Trail Boss, so let’s dive into what we know so far.

Silverado EV Trail Boss

In the first few seconds of this video from the Silverado EV truck reveal at CES, we get a short glimpse at what the Trail Boss is all about. The video reveals that it should crawl over rough terrain and handle high-speed desert terrain with equal ease.

It also hints that the truck will of course have an AWD/4WD system and probably air suspension that can raise and lower the ride height.

(The video also hints at the forthcoming Equinox EV and Blazer EV, which we talked about here.)

The current dino-juice-powered Silverado Trail Boss gets you standard 4WD, a small lift, a locking rear differential, front red recovery hooks, more skid plates, Hill Descent Control, and off-road tires wrapped on unique wheels.

Our best guess is that the electrified Trail Boss will have a dual-motor setup for AWD/4WD, air suspension for improved ground clearance when needed, electronics that can mimic locking differentials, and Hill Descent Control.

As shown in the one image and short video clips of the truck, it will come with aggressive mud-terrain tires wrapped on smaller wheels than the massive 24-inch wheels on the RST model. We can hope that someday Chevy will offer the Trail Boss with the cool steel wheels offered on the WT, which could also help bring the price down.

The Silverado EV Trail Boss also has sidesteps, which could also be functional rock-sliders. That feature would be quite useful because of the truck’s super-long wheelbase and poor breakover angle. It will also have red front recovery hooks.

We’d also wager that the RST’s four-wheel steering will find its way to the Trail Boss. It would be super useful off road and help the truck compete against Rivian’s Tank Turn and GMC’s Crab Walk mode.

Hopefully, the Trail Boss will ditch the RST’s all-glass roof, as it no doubt would raise the center of gravity of the truck, be less durable off road, and add considerably to the truck’s price.

The outside of the EV Trail Boss model features a sand-colored paint job with a lot of black/gray plastic, similar to the WT model. The Trail Boss front end combines the black plastic of the WT model with the more aggressive front bumper design and full-width lightbar of the RST model.

It will be interesting to see what the Silverado EV Trail Boss can offer for range in the real world, especially when low-traction off-road travel is thrown into the mix. The off-road-focused truck will definitely lose a bunch of the RST’s expected 400-plus-mile estimate, as the aggressive tires and taller ride height alone will no doubt hurt the range greatly.

The Silverado EV RST First Editions aren’t expected to come to market until at least late 2023. So it’s unlikely that we’ll see the Silverado EV Trail Boss until 2024 sometime, possibly even as a 2025-model-year truck.

Pricing is tough to predict without knowing more about what’s included, or not, on the Trail Boss model. A 2022 V8 short box crew cab Silverado Trail Boss starts at $52,500. And our best guess is that the all-new electric version will come in with a starting price north of $65,000.