Visually, the E-Ray borrows some of the Z06’s styling cues, including its 3.6-inch wider body and longer, skinnier rear air vents, but at heart, it’s closer to the Stingray whose quad tailpipe setup it shares. That’s because the E-Ray doesn’t runflat-plane crank 5.5-liter V8 but instead sticks with the base model’s 6.2-liter pushrod LT2. It makes the same 495 hp and 470 lb-ft , and drives the rear wheels through an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission, just like a regular C8.
The downside of that decision is that you can’t cruise through an entire city on electric power, which might become more vital in the coming years if urban areas start banning combustion vehicles. A Stealth Mode does allow you to creep away from your house on electric power at speeds of up to 45 mph when you’ve got a 5 AM rendezvous with a canyon road, but given the battery’s tiny 1.9 kWh capacity we suspect you’ll be lucky to get a couple of miles of EV running out of it.
On the positive side, not going down the PHEV route theoretically saves both money and weight, but to no one’s surprise, the E-Ray is still by far the lardiest Corvette you can buy. The addition of the electric motor and battery pack only reduces the luggage capacity by 0.2 cu-ft , but it adds a stack of flab. Chevy gives the E-Ray coupe’s dry weight as 3,774 lbs compared with 3,434 lbs for the Z06 and only 3,366 lbs for the base C8. Want an E-Ray Cabrio? That’ll run you another 82 lbs .
Those wheels feature a twisted five-spoke design that is exclusive to the E-Ray, and along with the extensive use of color coding and wider body will help you tell one from a Stingray when it passes you on the street.