Per tradition, SEMA brought home the bacon in a major way this year, providing us with a cornucopia of outrageous builds and over-the-top automotive craziness. Nevertheless, the Bow Tie brand managed to break away from the crowd thanks to this – the Chevrolet E-10 Concept. Offered as a shiny orange slab of classic 1962 C-10 pickup truck goodness, the E-10 looks fantastic, but it’s what lies underneath that matters most.
For those who may be out of the loop, the Chevrolet E-10 presents the brand’s new concept electric crate engine. Throwing down 450 horsepower and 470 pound-feet of torque thanks to two electric motors juiced by a pair of 400-volt batteries, the E-10 looks to “[blend] vintage styling and high performance with zero-emissions driving,” according to the Chevy press release.
This is a huge moment for performance lovers. While the industry is undoubtedly moving towards electrification at an ever-quickening pace, the Chevrolet E-10 looks beyond the horizon. And as most automakers are busy trying to figure out scale and profitability for EVs, the Chevrolet E-10 asks what matters to speed freaks – how do we make EVs fast?
For performance lovers, the crate engine is the beating heart. A crate engine can turn the cookie-cutter into the unique, the uninspiring into the holy-crap-will-you-look-at-that, and most importantly, the slow into the fast. The Chevrolet E-10 takes all those amazing things and throws them into the future.
Of course, we must temper our enthusiasm with caution. There’s still a long list of hurdles to overcome before we see electric crate powerplants hit future SEMA Shows en masse. Weight, recharge times, distance per charge… all of these things present very real roadblocks to widespread EV adoption.
Chevrolet’s E-10 Concept Electrifies Hot Rodding World
But the potential is undeniable. The Chevrolet E-10 presents a surprisingly clever concept for hot rodders to explore, and when it comes to the stuff that truly matters, like speed, power and torque, electric powertrains have proven their worth. Last year’s eCOPO Camaro race car concept is evidence enough of that.
Good on Chevy for taking a risk like this. When it comes to electric vehicles, the future remains unwritten – but concepts like the Chevrolet E-10 will provide the words.
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Comments
The idea behind the concept might not be for everybody, but damn, everybody has got to agree that is a super cool truck and a pretty unique concept for electrification given even the era of vehicles and cultural state that truck came from.
Note to proofreader: it is “hurdles” not “hurtles”.
Hurtle definition: move or cause to move at a great speed, typically in a wildly uncontrolled manner.
Hurdle definition: an obstacle, enclose or fence off with hurdles, athletes in a race must jump hurdles.
I didn’t see it in the write up but I assume it must have been about propelling the truck fast = hurtle.
Just curious if Chevrolet is calling this setup a crate “engine” or will it be more appropriately dubbed a crate “motor”?
Motor would be correct as that’s what it is. Just as long as they don’t call it a crate propulsion system… I hate that. Who at GM decided to change everything over to calling things ‘propulsion’? Why? It sounds ridiculous.
Dan Nicholson’s decision.
Engine definition is – a machine for converting any of various forms of energy into mechanical force and motion.
Engine & motor are both acceptable terminology.
I like the truck regardless of power, gas or electric. Love the RCSB. Which is the attention getter ,the truck or motor?
I have a 70 chevy C10 and my 383 is getting old. This would be something I would be interested in. What do you think the total cost would be?
Now on display at the WTC. It’s pretty cool.
There needs to be a Bowtie above the EV letters… I dig it though.