Chevrolet has fully revealed its all-electric Blazer EV line-up with a range of go-fast trims, and even a pursuit variant for police.
The Blazer is a reimagined combustion nameplate which once used to serve on more off-road-centric products in North America, but now has been reborn as a fully electric mid-size SUV.
Chevrolet says it predicts a range of up to 515km on a single charge for the largest battery, and its top-spec performance-focused SS variant (the first electric vehicle to wear an SS badge) will accelerate from 0-100km/h in less than four seconds.
The dual-motor all-wheel-drive set-up produces 415kW/879Nm in SS form, and packs standard items like a 17.7-inch multimedia touchscreen, LED headlights, up to 22-inch alloy wheels, and fast 11kW AC charging or 190kW DC charging.
Interestingly, the Blazer EV is available in base 1LT front-wheel-drive form, all-wheel-drive form as a mid-grade 2LT, or the choice of front-, rear-, or all-wheel drive as an upper mid-grade RS. The top-spec SS is all-wheel drive only.
More techy features of the Blazer EV include single-pedal driving mode via regenerative braking, and the brand’s full suite of active safety features and “super cruise” adaptive cruise control – which GM claims is “the industry’s first true hands-free driver-assistance technology”.
The “Police Pursuit Vehicle” variant is offered with the same performance brake package and top-spec battery and motors as the SS grade, but can be chosen in all-wheel or rear-wheel drive by law enforcement agencies.
Chevrolet says the Blazer EV will cost between the equivalent of A$65,220 and A$95,663 depending on variant, with a rollout taking place from mid-2023.
The Blazer EV employs GM’s new ‘Ultium’ fully electric platform, a version of which will also underpin the new-generation electric Silverado ute. Consisting of a flexible floor plan and modular batteries developed with LG Energy Solution, it can be offered as a 400v architecture with up to 200kW DC fast charging, or in the case of larger utes and SUVs, 800v with up to 350kW DC fast charging.
Promising cars like the Blazer EV come years too late to offer Holden a fighting chance to stay in the Australian market, with GM pulling the plug on the Lion brand in February 2020 after 160 years in operation.
At the time a GM statement said: “After comprehensive assessment, we regret that we could not prioritise the investment required for Holden to be successful for the long term in Australia and New Zealand, over all other considerations we have globally.”
No doubt one of those considerations was the focus on developing EVs like the Silverado and Blazer. The only mass-market electrified vehicle to be offered by Holden before the axe fell was the Volt – a range-extender plug-in hybrid with a lift-back style body based on the same platform as the Cruze.
The arguably-ahead-of-its-time Volt arrived in 2012 and was discontinued in 2015 after only moving around 250 units.
There’s a flicker of a chance for a Blazer EV to be offered in Australia, though, with local operation GM Speciality Vehicles (GMSV) offering right-hand-drive conversions of some popular Chevrolet nameplates like the Corvette and Silverado.
Keyword: Could this have given Holden a fighting chance? Chevrolet Blazer SS electric car looks to be tough alternative to Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, Tesla Model Y Performance and Kia EV6 GT