President Is Eager to Drive the Electric Chevy Corvette e-Ray

• After Biden won the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, he famously broke embargo on GM’s plans for an all-electric, 200-mph version of the new Chevrolet C8 Corvette.

• The president says he’s looking forward to getting behind the wheel of the C8 e-Ray Corvette EV, and that he expects to be first in line to purchase one.

• We’re waiting to hear from the Secret Service as to how much personal driving presidents can do after leaving office.

Whatever your politics, you cannot deny that President Biden is a committed car guy.

First there was The Onion satire in 2009, about then-Vice President Biden stripping off his T-shirt to wash his bird-stickered 1981 Pontiac Trans Am, while wearing cut-off shorts, in the White House driveway. Throw in frequent references to his father’s job as a car salesman and to his real driveway treasure, a Goodwood green 1967 Chevy Corvette convertible.

After Biden won the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, he famously broke embargo on GM’s plans for an all-electric, 200-mph version of the new Chevy C8 Corvette.

More recently, before his speech following his signing of the $280-billion CHIP Act written to attract computer-chip manufacturing to the US, he spoke into the podium mic enthused about the Inflation Reduction Act just passed in the Senate that includes incentives for North American EV production.

Biden said to the members of Congress and press gathered on the South Lawn of the White House that the new electric GMC Hummer could do a 4.1-second 0-60-mph time, “quicker than my Corvette.”

He lamented that the Secret Service doesn’t let him drive his C2, that he’s looking forward to getting behind the wheel of the upcoming C8 e-Ray electric Corvette, and that he expects to be first in line to purchase one. A Chevrolet spokesman says the company has not promised the future model to anyone. Either way, Biden cannot drive his own car while president for security reasons. Perhaps after he leaves office?

Republicans and some Democrats hope that would be in January 2025. Moderate Democrats hope that will be Jan. 20, 2029, and the administration so far has affirmed the expectation that Biden will run for re-election in 2024. By then he may be able to buy any manner of electrified vehicle.

What we know about the C8’s electrified evolution is that a plug-in hybrid Corvette has been confirmed for 2024. A battery-electric model is expected shortly after.

While there has been some speculation the BEV Corvette will be a crossover/utility vehicle—perhaps in the mold of the Ferrari FF—our expectation based on past reporting is that this is the model that will be called e-Ray, and it will be a “conventional” two-door C8, with Ultium batteries arranged low in the chassis for optimum balance and handling. No reason a mid-engine C8 couldn’t become a mid-motor C8.

We emailed the Secret Service to find out what its policy is toward presidents driving after they’ve left office and have received no response—not a surprise considering the more pressing issues facing the agency these days.

This does recall an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee in which host Jerry Seinfeld brought a split-window C2 Corvette to the White House in late 2015, and drove President Barrack Obama—at the time about 15 months before the end of his second term—around the same White House driveway Biden allegedly used to wash his Trans Am. Obama remained in the passenger seat for the video shoot, and a Secret Service agent kept Seinfeld—who never appeared to breach 10 mph in the sports car—from driving off onto Executive Avenue.

So we’d like to suggest that Biden keep his e-Ray—whenever he gets it and no matter how many customers beat him to the showroom—at a race circuit. Unfortunately, Virginia International Raceway is probably the closest road racing circuit, and it’s 230 miles to Washington, DC, and 340 miles to Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

But that’s a relatively short helicopter ride away.