Here’s everything we know about the 2024 Corvette E-Ray hybrid

When the hybrid 'Vette goes on sale later this year, it will be the quickest of them all.

See full article...

 

[rosen380]

Price feels steep, having bought that Z06 brand new for mid-$40K's in 2003

Can that be right? My 1993 Corvette (just a regular coupe, not a ZR-1 or anything special) stickered for $39k.

Even if your Z06 had no options of any kind, 10 years worth of inflation plus a premium trim for just a few thousand more sounds low.

[edit]
https://www.autoblog.com/buy/2003-Chevrolet-Corvette-Z06_Hardtop__2dr_Coupe/pricing/
That puts the un-optioned 2003 Z06 at $51,435... though assuming that their optional equipment list is right, there were very few options and at most were adding a couple hundred to that.

 

[rosen380]

Wow this looks amazi- wait. Is that a digital dash? Eww. Gross. I remember digital dashes. They break on you. Do not want this 100k dumpster fire now thanks.

Way to ruin it GM.*

(* Obviously I'm joking here. I could never afford this. If I won the lottery, this would be my car. I have a Dodge Stealth R/T Twin Turbo. AWD cars are my favorite. I wish I had one of these. If anyone wants to donate one to me PM me and I'll give you the details on where to send it please.)

FWIW-- my 1993 has a digital dash and it is all original and everything still works fine.

 

[rosen380]

Just one more thing on price-- Corvette price changes have pretty historically hugged inflation, outside of the end of the C3 into the C4.

Take the base MSRP of a 1953 Corvette and add annual inflation to it each year. Once the price kind of settled in (started high in 1953 and then was cut drastically for 1954-1955), from 1958 through 1976 that "calculated MSRP from the 1953 model was always in the range of 93-105% of the actual MSRP.

Then from 1977 to 1984, the prices jumped significantly, but resetting the "adjusted price" for 1985 and then going back to just adding inflation each year, we get 38 years where the "calculated" MSRP is always in the range of 89-108% of actual.

And split that range up to 1985-2005 vs 2006-2023 and the ranges are 89-100% and 94-105%.

 

[rosen380]

Also something that gives the driver 1 hour of explosive diarrhea the first time they enable fog lights in non-foggy conditions, and doubles each time thereafter.

In my Wrangler, the act of turning off the headlights also triggers the fog lights to turn off, so the only way to accidentally leave the fog lights on for next time is if you chose to also leave the headlights on (which would have some issues of it's own ).

 

[rosen380]

OK, guess I misunderstood. From the phrasing in the article I got the impression that it would have to "gas guzzle" after a short time because of the power demands of the vehicle. Thanks for clarifying.

Even gas guzzling might need an asterisk.

A 2023 Corvette is EPA rated 16/24, while a Lamborghini Hurican is 13/18. For what it is, it is already pretty efficient.

Hell, I have a 1993 Corvette and used to have a 1991 Camry. The Camry was rated for 24 combined versus 18 for the Corvette, but the Corvette weighed 15% more and had about 2.5x the HP, so all-in-all, I'd call it pretty impressive.

 

[rosen380]

Why did they waste the E-Ray name on a hybrid? They plan to have an electric Corvette in the future and it would've been nice if the had reserved E-Ray for that car. This is just a little electric assist, should have just replaced the Z with an H.

Or the E-Ray will just be the name handed to Corvettes that have electric motors and when a PHEV or full BEV comes around, E-Ray will still be perfectly apt...?

 

[rosen380]

Used to work with a guy who followed me one evening with his sedan's headlights far too high.
I told him when we stopped, and he replied that it didn't bother him. I was hoping he was joking, but he never fixed it.

Now, with the "my pickup's higher than yours" fashion, it's becoming a huge safety issue for the rest of us, from in front and from behind. We do need rules keeping headlights below 2 or so feet before more people get blinded and killed.

For whatever it is worth-- I find that DESPITE the elevated seating position in my (completely stock 2010 Wrangler, no lift or anything), the bright LED bulbs on modern sedans are still blinding to me. My gut feeling is that either it is how headlights are aimed from the factory and/or more of an issue with modern brighter LEDs (as older/dimmer sealed-beam headlights, no problem).

---
And just to answer the Wrangler question posed. My Wrangler is a 2010 (still with the original sealed-beam headlights)... I've never adjusted the headlights and I have no lift or anything.

 

[rosen380]

I don’t drive on the track if that’s what you mean. But I do know that most of the interesting roads where I live in the Santa Cruz mountains, anything bigger than the Z3 Coupe I used to have is an unpleasant experience. Lotus and Mazda are perfectly capable of producing modern tidy-sized sports cars. The Corvette is a whale by comparison.

Which is why Snark218 said to compare it to something comparable (like 500+ HP mid/rear-engined cars), not to something completely different.

Here, I'll help you.

Lamborghini Aventador 192" x 83" x 45"
McLaren 600LTS 181" x 81" x 47"
Chevrolet Corvette 182" x 76" x 49"
McLaren 720S 179" x 81" x 47"
Lamborghini Huracan 179" x 77" x 48"
Acura NSX 179" x 76" x 48"
McLaren 570S 178" x 76" x 47"
Audi R8 174" x 76" x 49"
Lotus Emira 174" x 75" x 48"

 

[rosen380]

vdiv, perhaps you can remind us how much the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, and Ferrari SF90 Stradale cost in comparison? The Corvette, at least since the C5, is about big bang for your buck. It was never intended to beat the world in every possible way. That would be impossible at its price point. Yeah, I do feel sometimes like a defender of the make since my C5 was such a great car in so many ways ("leaf springs?").

There is also some tradition inertia over specifically the Corvette. The C8 was polarizing to the existing ownership community when it was first announced. This is another big step forward for the platform. AWD is a huge first for it. Getting rid of a V8 engine entirely is another leap for some of the intended audience.

As far as performance per dollar, you can go further back-- When the C4 first came out it was pretty impressive:

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15141822/1984-chevrolet-corvette-c4-archived-road-test/The roadholding on this new machine is so advanced that we recorded the highest skidpad lateral acceleration—0.90 g—ever observed with a conventional automobile by this staff. That figure practically trivializes the previous high-water marks, in the 0.82-g range, generated by such exotics as the Porsche 928 and assorted Ferraris.

It is hands-down the fastest American automobile, capable of 140-mph top speeds, 0-to-60 times under seven seconds, and 15.2-second quarter-mile forays at 90 mph. In fact, these figures qualify the Corvette as one of the half-dozen fastest production automobiles in the entire world!

Its braking, thanks to an advanced Girlock four-wheel-disc system, makes the car stop as if it had been dropped into a sand bank. Our 70-to-0-mph brake test produced a stop in a mere 173 feet—seven feet shorter than the best 1982 distance of 180 feet, recorded by a Porsche 928, and not far off the all-time record of 165 feet, set by a Porsche 930 Turbo!"


Performance-wise, it was on par with cars that cost 2-3x as much (if not more). And I don't think the story is much different when the C3 and C2 came out.

 

[rosen380]

Imagine the negative comments if this was a PHEV with a 1.9 kWh battery. Sometimes I find the things people post in comments here to be utterly ridiculous.

Just the hassle of plugging in the car so that you could be guaranteed to have a couple of miles of electric range... uggh.

Most PHEVs are like 20-40 mile ranges, if this has an EV range of 3-4 miles as-is, we're talking about a battery that is 5-13x bigger (so 10-25 kWh)... At 5kg/kWh, we're talking about +40-120 kg!

 

[rosen380]

And hey, if it can do 3-4 miles of neighborhood/parking lot trundle, that's better than a Prius (non-PHEV electric range is usually 1-2 miles, at very low speeds).

The link below is where I got 3-4 miles from:

https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/...de, meanwhile, allows,to 4 miles, said Franz.
"The Stealth Mode, meanwhile, allows E-Ray to run purely on electrons for somewhere between 3 to 4 miles, said Franz. It can run up to 45 mph, at which point the V8 automatically fires up."

--
That said, the Prius HEV 1.3 kWh battery uses a 40% SoC window, so only has ~0.52 usable kWh. So if we assume an EV range of about 1 mile (at <45 MPH) that 1.9 miles/kWh.

For comparison, the Prius Prime has an 8.8 kWh battery and uses a 75% SoC window (I think). So it'd be 6.6 kWh usable. The Prime is listed with a 25 mile range which would be almost double that of the HEV.

Does that pass the smell test? I guess I thought the Prius HEV and PHEV were very similar aside from the size of the battery and being able to plug them in...? Or does it suggest the HEV has closer to a 2 mile range following whatever the EPA did to get their 25 mile estimate for the PHEV?

For the sake of arguments, let's split the difference and figure 1.5 miles for the HEV on it's 520 Wh. And let's just go with the E-Ray being a similar rate.

So then 3-4 miles would be 1.04-1.56 usable kWh, which would be a SoC window of 55-82% on the 1.9 kWh pack. That might be a bit high for a small hybrid pack, but then there is a pretty big difference between a Prius where typical might be 150-300k miles for it's lifetime and a Corvette where 100k miles isn't super common (my 1993 is still under 75k).