While pulling out all of the stops against Porsche, Ferrari, and Lamborghini, the 2024 Chevy Corvette E-Ray boasts a thorough sense of all-American swagger. Roaring jazz clubs, cowboy ranchers navigating the red yet unforgiving Rio Grande, and generations of breadbasket high-school football teams all come to mind when drawing a comparison! We watched eagerly here at Jim Butler Chevy of St Louis as this amazing car’s performance has been pushed even further with the aid of electrification.
An electric motor powers the front wheels, while the C8’s quite trusty 6.2-liter pushrod V8 handles propulsion duty out back. Invigoratingly in unison, the pair creates 655 horsepower, which means this year’s E-Ray is within 15 horsepower of the incessantly fire-breathing Z06. The convenient “Stealth” mode allows you to come and go from your residence via electric power without disturbing the neighbors. Since the C8’s enthralling launch, it has become a Car and Driver “10Best” winner and staff favorite due to its excellent power and class-leading handling.
The E-Ray now sports the same wide-body kit and front-end treatment as the high-performance Z06 model and also proudly struts onto the stage as the first all-wheel drive ‘Vette. It is available as either a coupe or convertible and adamantly wears a folding hard top. It is offered in 1LZ, 2LZ, and 3LZ trim levels with the Car and Driver team’s best recommendation being upgrading to the 2LZ version. This adds some very cool features to the mix including a 14-speaker Bose system, blind-spot monitoring, and a wireless charging pad.
A very small 1.1kWh battery pack allows the E-Ray to travel at 45 mph on a purely electric power source in Stealth mode, which is crucial for retaining your much-needed HOA membership! With both the electric motor and V8 humming along at full steam, the E-Ray launched confidently up to 60 mph in just 2.6 seconds. All-wheel drive will absolutely provide some intense winter advantages, and all-weather high-performance tires now come as standard on the E-Ray. This crew was equipped with summer rubber, and they billed the cornering grip ability as “outright heroic.”
Acting as a sports car that truly operates with two personalities in one, it also arrives on the scene with an interior that is not too different from the Z06 or Stingray models. The coupe offers a removable roof, channeling the true Corvette spirit and boasting the space to quickly store it in the trunk. The interior design is a bit less simplistic than some out there and remains very driver-focused while offering a “Great Wall” of necessary controls. The E-Ray uses the brand-new Infotainment 3 Plus system, which proved to be easy to use while offering a razor-sharp and quick response.
Last fall, Car and Driver claimed post-test-drive that “The Corvette emerges from the petroleum age into the modern era of electrification, with a hybrid juiced to go faster, and not necessarily farther.” Big V8 horsepower and heaping amounts of low-end torque make the E-Ray a purveyor of lightning-fast performance that is all incredibly available. The Z06 possessed a very shrill and rabid personality, while the E-Ray remained sophisticated and well-polished. Braking takes place with a characteristic and powerful motion, with a pleasantly soft character at the tip-top of the process.
The verdict here is memorable and not surprising in the least: after a few runs around the curvy and speed-demon-friendly Colorado Springs turf, the E-Ray proved to be highly evolved and consistently refined. Making the change from silky smooth to capable of brute force exists where we have always loved it: at the spirited push of the throttle.