Will the American sports car buyer choose a hybrid? That’s the real question. You see, for the last 70 years, the Corvette has always democratized what the high-dollar European sports cars were doing. A Corvette has always been the option that went nearly as fast and looked nearly as good as the Ferrari, or the Jaguar, or the Aston Martin, but anywhere from a third to a half of the cost.
Of course, that savings did come from somewhere, and a close examination of a Corvette and a contemporary Ferrari makes plain exactly from where the costs were cut. Fiberglass is cheaper than expensive, curvy aluminum, and cheaper still than carbon fiber. Big-displacement, torquey pushrod engines are cheaper than rev-happy DOHC ones or fancy twin-turbo mills. A Corvette would go, stop, and turn like an exotic on paper, but never quite felt like one.
Well, the year is 2023 and those fancy-pants Europeans are doing hybrids now. Beginning a decade ago with the “holy trinity” of hypercars -- the P1, LaFerrari, and 918 Spyder -- hybridization, it was declared, would be the future. There would be no more transfer cases; electric power goes up front. There would be no more turbo lag; electric power goes to the flywheel to fill torque between gears.
Nine years after those 900-horsepower monsters knocked our collective socks off and became instant investment pieces in the process, the tech has trickled down, not just to the $400,000 Ferrari 296 GTB (a 2024 PCOTY contender), $250,000 McLaren Artura, and now-departed $190,000 Acura NSX, but to the new Corvette E-Ray. It is the first ever hybrid, all-wheel drive Corvette.
But here’s the thing: If you want a Ferrari 296, or a McLaren Artura, or an Acura NSX, you have to get the hybrid system. It comes with the package. If you want a Corvette, you have to choose the hybrid. You can also get a Stingray, and you can also get a Z06 (last year’s Performance Car of the Year) that run on pure, distilled, finely aged dinosaur.
So why should you choose the E-Ray? Here’s a short list of reasons:
All-Wheel Drive: This is the first AWD Corvette ever, which the Corvette people say takes away the last excuse for not driving your Corvette year-round. I know for a fact that even rear-drive Corvettes are quite good in the snow given the proper tire, so I doubt this is the reason that most people don’t drive their Corvettes in winter. My guess would be that it’s because to a large segment of the middle class, a Corvette is the nicest thing they own, and they baby it a little too much, rather than driving it in the rain or the snow.
Nevertheless, the E-Ray’s AWD system is pretty trick, and if you’re not too precious about your Corvette, you should take advantage! The Stingray LS2 powertrain and Tremec 8-speed DCT are unchanged, and the hybrid motor and battery only work on the front end. The battery is small, just 1.9 kWh and there is only one e-motor in the front, not two. This saves weight, complexity, and cost versus the Porsche 918 or Acura NSX systems, which use two motors. The E-Ray’s battery is not designed for range, and you can only drive a very short distance on electricity only, but it’s designed to charge and discharge quickly, which it absolutely does. It also never “dies,” always leaving a bit of juice in there so you always have AWD functionality. Because it’s a single motor, the E-Ray then uses brake vectoring where necessary to simulate the active torque vectoring you get with higher-end cars. The result is that the steering isn’t “magical” like in the NSX or 918, but the front end does effectively claw you out of tight hairpin corners.
It’s the quickest accelerating Corvette ever. Thanks to its combined 655 HP and 595 lb-ft of torque, and with the benefit of AWD, the E-Ray will beat a C8 Z06, and therefore also any Corvette before it, to sixty, to the quarter mile, and in a highway pass. It will chirp the front tires on the way to hitting sixty in 2.5 seconds and a 10.5 second quarter mile. According to GM, it will also beat the Z06 in highway passing measurements as well. And with standard Carbon Ceramic Brakes from the Z06, part of a comprehensive weight reduction package to offset the hybrid system, it stops well too.
It’s a fantastic grand touring car. This is what GM actually designed the E-Ray for - an all season, all country, road tripping machine. And at this, it’s superb. It’s not only quicker than the Z06 in most measurements, but also it’s more fuel efficient than the standard Stingray. It’s got the wider body work mostly cribbed from the Z06, but with the Stingray’s rear fascia and split exhaust, maximizing trunk space for luggage. It’s got magnetic ride suspension tuned just slightly firmer than a Z51, but just softer than a base spec Z06, which is perfect for highways, canyons, and totally acceptable for daily use. And it has a spec version of Michelin’s excellent Pilot Sport All Season 4S tire. It's the widest such tire ever fitted to any car, that works well on all types of roads, in all temperatures, and even in light snow. A PS4S is also available, as are ultralight carbon fiber wheels.
Because the C8 Corvette was designed from the ground up to have this hybrid system, neither the battery nor the motor intrudes into the cabin or trunk space. And it never needs to be plugged in; it charges itself as needed or using the Charge+ mode, in just a few miles of driving or one cool-down lap of a medium sized road course.
Speaking of road courses, the E-Ray does those too. While it’s not optimized for track work the way the Z06 is, the E-Ray can handle track days, no problem. By using Track or “Z” mode, the battery will discharge power as quickly as possible for the fastest available lap times. This will last about three laps of a road course. Once the battery is depleted, you can hit a physical button by your right knee to go back into Charge+ mode, and in one cool down lap, the battery will be full again. If you start a trackday session with a full battery and in Charge+ mode, you will get slightly less power delivery to the front, but the battery will last the full 30-minute session. Lap times will be approximately 3-4% slower than in full discharge mode. Bottom line: it’s not a race car, but it’s still fun and functional on the track, very flexible and versatile, and the brakes, chassis, tires, and gas powertrain are more than up to the task.
The electric system disappears when you don’t need it. The E-Ray still has a 495 horsepower V8 powering the rear wheels. It is a very effective powertrain that wasn’t broke and didn’t need fixing. And to that end, most of the time, you don’t need the extra 160 horsepower from the electric drive. If you’re creeping along at light throttle, if you’re cruising down the highway, if you’re simply maintaining light acceleration through an open sweeper, the E-Ray behaves like a Stingray. You don’t feel the electric drive, because it’s not doing anything. The gas and electric powertrains are fully standalone systems, and in most non-performance situations, the electric drive sits back and collects juice from the front wheels.
Over half throttle in a straight line, or when the front begins to get overwhelmed pulling out of a hairpin, or under hard braking diving towards the apex, the e-motor goes to work, filling in the gaps in the C8’s power plant and chassis, with an accompanying futuristic whirr blasted through the speakers. It’s there when you need it to make the car do things a regular Corvette simply cannot do.
You can go for a drive early in the morning and not wake your neighbors or family. This one is a bonus, and I probably wouldn’t say it’s a primary reason for buying an E-Ray, but the battery allows you to start the car in electric “Stealth” mode, and front-wheel drive out your neighborhood silently without making your family and friends suffer your cold start alarm clock. Because the battery is very small, the E-Ray has no real effective “range” as other hybrid sports cars do, but it can perform this specific task, cruising relatively slowly for a couple miles before firing the gas engine. It does need to be noted that you cannot put the car back into “Stealth” mode while driving. This is a start-up only mode.
So those are some good reasons to buy an E-Ray. Now, there are also reasons not to buy an E-Ray that you may want to consider:
It’s the most complex consumer product on sale today. I’m not saying this, Tadge Juechter, a man who knows a thing or two about Corvettes as the Executive Chief Engineer of the whole car, is saying this. “If you get an E-Ray convertible,” he says, [with a mechanical power folding top, gas and electric powertrains, magnetic shocks, all wheel drive, and a dual clutch transmission], “it is the most complex consumer product ever sold.” I don’t have a way to directly refute this claim, but I can’t think of another car currently on sale that does come with all these things. This was meant as a brag, but long term, you might consider it a point-against.
It’s the heaviest Corvette ever. This shouldn’t shock you, considering what the last paragraph was about, but it is. It’s around 3,900 lbs. The weight penalty for the hybrid system actually isn’t all that bad - only about 200 lbs versus a comparably equipped Stingray, but still, most people don’t want heavy sports cars and you may not either.
Chevrolet still makes the Z06. The Z06 is an incredibly special car. It was our Performance Car of the Year just last year, and rightfully so. GM reverse engineered the Ferrari 458 Speciale, one of the greatest cars in history, and succeeded. You want that. You need that. And it’s only about $6,000 extra, spec-for-spec.
I came away from the E-Ray impressed with what it is, what it can do, and what it offers for the money. My tester stickered, loaded up with carbon goodies, for around $140,000 - a lot of money for sure, but half of what it would take to get into an Artura and under a third of what it would take to get a 296 GTB in your garage. And it works! The hybrid system is there when you want it, and goes away when you don’t need it. You don’t have to think about plugging it in, and you don’t have to think about the battery discharging so much that you lose the all-wheel drive capability.
Would I personally choose the hybrid variant of the Corvette? Not as long as the Z06 is around, I wouldn’t. That car is simply too special, the cost difference is incremental, and I don’t have much rain or snow to contend with. But the E-Ray is the look into our Corvette future for sure, so choose wisely, and be thankful the choice still exists.
Matt Farah is a lifelong car enthusiast who began his automotive career at dealerships, rental agencies, and detail shops before discovering the power of YouTube in 2006, with his channel The Smoking Tire. Farah has a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, with a concentration in Photography, helping not only create YouTube content but also providing his own photography for his Editor-at-Large position at Road & Track.
He has hosted and produced television series on NBC Sports, G4 Network, SPEED, and Esquire. The Smoking Tire Podcast is #1 in the category every week of the year. Now at 800+ episodes, The Smoking Tire podcast is the definitive guest stop for who’s who in the auto industry. Farah’s Westside Collector Car Storage is a game-changer in luxury, concierge parking that expanded to a second location in 2023.
