The Chevy Blazer EV Is Solid, but Not a Gamechanger

General Motors has built production EVs on the Ultium platform for more than two years. Yet if you live anywhere but California or Detroit, you probably haven’t seen one. The Hummer EV is a six-figure rarity; the Lyriq lives mostly in coastal cities; as of last quarter, Chevy had delivered just 18 Silverado EVs. I live in Southern California, America's EV capital, and I’ve seen more Lucid Airs than Ultiums. If you still haven’t seen one, Chevy’s betting that the Blazer EV will buck that trend.

While American EV SUV shoppers have some solid options, the Blazer's shortlist of direct competitors is especially short. The Volkswagen ID.4, Tesla Model Y, Toyota bZ4X, and Ford Mustang Mach-E feel are noticeably smaller, and the larger Model Xs, BMW iXs, Rivian R1S’s, and Mercedes EQEs of the world are all premium products. The Blazer EV arrives in a midsize segment that is red hot in the internal combustion world and untapped by EVs.

The Blazer EV marks Chevy's attempt to get that first seat at the head of the segment. While the Bolt feels mostly like a standard Chevy hatchback with batteries, the Blazer EV feels like a step into the next generation. There’s no power button, so like a Tesla you step on the brake and it’s ready to roll and there are permanent digital toggles for things like the one-pedal drive mode. Almost everything is controlled by a screen with Google built-in, wherein the nav system uses Google Maps and handles charging stops for you. CarPlay is gone, but the car’s Android operating system will read your texts, offer you voice assistance with Google Assistant, and have access to the Google Play store for all Android Automotive apps.

But while this is a step into the new world, there are still hints of the old-world redundancy we love. There’s a volume knob and temperature knob and buttons for fan speed and air direction. The Blazer powers off automatically, but there’s a “leave vehicle on for 60 minutes” button that pops up whenever you’re in park. There’s a manual “power vehicle off” button next to it, and while the garage door buttons are gone they reappear in the control center whenever you’re near a programmed location. The philosophy, per a Chevy rep, was to make everything you use daily a button or persistent control. Everything else lives within a quick, intuitive reach on the display, the rep says. Even the exterior gets clever features, like head- and taillights that display a “fill up” animation while charging.

The Blazer EV has plenty of tricks like that. But it also lets you turn them all off. Nor does the vehicle force you to learn new methods for opening its doors, or putting on the turn signals, or all of that change-for-change’s-sake nonsense Tesla traffics in. There’s plenty of shiny stuff to keep your attention, but the Blazer EV can be configured to be about as familiar to Chevy buyers as its ICE counterpart. As a blend of innovation and common sense, the Blazer EV and Chevy’s entire EV software suite is a triumph.

As a $60,215 road car, the Blazer is less successful. The interior is a strange mixture of Camaro-inspired shapes, dazzling screens, and gloss plastic patterned parts, plenty futuristic but not especially nice. The materials look more interesting than what you’d get in an internal-combustion Chevy, but a sixty-grand MSRP comes with expectations this interior can’t meet.

Buyers spending that much will expect a better ride than they get. The Blazer is smooth and quiet on the highway, but around town it lumbers over bumps. Big impacts transfer most of their energy into to the cabin. The Blazer EV's reactions to driver inputs are relatively precise, but the one-pedal driving mode doesn't react as linearly as competitors, and the steering feels numb and gooey.