I just helped a friend negotiate a deal on a lightly used 2025 Chevy Silverado EV RST.

It had a $99k original list and he got it for low 60’s with 10,000 miles on odometer.

Compared to my 2024 Lightning Platinum.
Super Cruise had significantly more roads mapped than the Lightning Blue Cruise
Battery capacity (Max Range) is 202 kWh vs 131 kWh on my Platinum Lightning
EPA range is 460 miles vs 300 miles on Lightning
it has 4 wheel steering and sidewinder directional steering
It has similar inverter power output with 240vac 30 amp in bed
i don’t know if it has Apple play or not vs Lightning with Apple Play
Ride is stiffer than Lightning
To me the seating comfort is better in the Lightning.
It has Multiflex Midgate to carry extended cargo in bed.
It has heads-up display
I don’t believe it is Phone as a Key capable.

He is using it to support his horses with picking up hay and supplies and towing his horse trailer with 2 horses up to 200 miles.

His primary vehicle is a Cadillac Lyriq EV and after owning the Lyriq for 18 months now he wants to ditch fossil fueled vehicles. He has the FPL EV charger installed at his house which costs $38 for unlimited vehicle charging. The inefficiency that the Silverado EV exhibits is not a factor due to the unlimited charging program.

In 18 months and 15,000 miles he’s only had to charge away from home twice for 15 minutes each time. All other charge sessions were completed at home.

 

My neighbor owns an all electric Silverado. He has used it to haul a tandem axle dump trailer full of broken up pool concrete to the dump several times... with one load so heavy it broke the Equalizer hitch head (bent the ball angle adjustment bolt). He was using the Equalizer head only, without the spring bars, for lack of having another ball mount handy. The receiver hitch on the Silverado was not damaged at all, as I got underneath and inspected everything when he came back from the dump.

He's driven his Silverado from California to Colorado and back again. He has put a rack on the back (a Harbor Freight special, cut and weld modified to fit the Avalanche style body of the Silverado) and hauled 20 foot long lumber with it. Invariably, the back of the truck is loaded with several sacks of concrete and various and sundry tools. He's a building contractor, and uses the truck like a truck.

No issues. He loves it.

 

The towing range is amazing. If the Lightning could tow a heavy trailer 200 miles between charges I would be totally happy with it and I wouldn't be in a hurry to get rid of it. In fact, if the Lightning could tow that far I might keep this truck for a LONG time. But...it isn't so.

 

I love that the GM is a well thought out and seemingly well built truck. This will only force Ford to up their game and do it better.

 

Just today I saw 4 separate EV commercials. They were from Lexus, Chevy, Cadillac and GMC. I can't remember the last time I saw a Ford EV Commercial. Ford seems to have abandoned the EV market. It's a shame since the Lightning is a great truck.

 

They have two great vehicles but in their implementations have pushed away or missed their target audiences. The lightning started off great, but as it was rolled out became too expensive. The big battery was saved for the high priced trims. Virtually the only way to get a pro was if you were a fleet buyer, and extended range pros were only fleet. The Mach E is also a great product, finally getting some traction but there are many mustang (or any muscle car for that matter) purists who won’t even be caught dead in one because of the connotation that a sports car has to rumble. It’s a nice SUV, it should have been marketed as one.

 

Ford isn't advertising much of anything that I can see. But, in their defense, it seems to me as though they are selling everything that they build and more if possible.

How in the hell are the F-series trucks flying off the lots as fast as they do? I'm assuming that people just aren't paying attention to the bottom line, just the monthly terms. Or, they've resolved themselves to the mindset that vehicles or rates will never get any cheaper so why wait. Either way, it's self defeating.

I think Ford will do well with the 30K electric project that they intend to roll out. Nothing to get emotional about but affordable and hopefully as reliable as a cielng fan. As for the Lightning, it's demise has been announced. I can't wait to see what comes behind.

 

F series is selling because at the moment Ford has the strongest engine line up in the business.

For F150s, the 3.5EB and 2.7EB are both well sorted, the Coyote is still around, aided by the epic fumble by Toyota's 3.4L V35A motor fiasco, Ram's decision to discontinue the 5.7 Hemi, and the onging GM 5.3 and 6.3 self destructing.

For SDs, in diesel realm, Ram's late model Cummins have had a ton of issues, the Duramax is still not taken seriously by fleet buyers due to the IFS, whereas the 6.7 PSD is...the least bad. For gas motors Ford is the only one left with NA push rod motor with port injection and no cylinder deactivation.

In other words Ford full size truck line up is in its best position in the business in over 30 years.

 

I greatly and genuinely appreciate your well thought response but it was more rhetorically aimed at the prices in the industry.

My retirement income is generous and my credit score is no less than incredible but what I lack is the cash on hand to do a full cash offer. I feel that I fit squarely in with the majority of the buying public. Yeah sure, I could pull the money from my house but in my personal opinion, that's a fools errand. In fact, I may know only one or two people who could pay cash for an 80K truck and yet, I'm not so sure that they would.

So this brings me back to my lack of understanding as to why the sales figures are so robust industry wide and why Ford isn't circling the wagons to bring in some less expensive alternatives.

At any rate, I digress. I don't know much about the EV chevy let alone it's pricing structure but it sure seems as though GM is doing a better job addressing new car options for most all income levels.

 

I think I understand what you are saying.

What has been an interesting situation is that the stock market has really been a strange creature in the past ten years. We had a lost decade plus 2 years between 2000 and 2012, but since then it has been an astonishingly sustained bull run in the market. Everyone who has money invested in the general market has seen their portfolios more than triple in the past 12 years, more like 8-10x if they invested heavily in the nasdaq heavy index such as QQQ. This required no luck, no stock picking skills, no babysitting or active fund managing, one can do it in their 401k or IRA on autopilot while they go about their daily lives going to work, go to the grocery store, pick up kids from school, and so on.

What that means is there is a certain subsection of buyers out there who saved and invested consistently in that 12 year period are now doing exceptionally well. I did some back of napkin numbers and I estimate about 3-5% of adults in America buy a new car in each given year. The car market as a whole really only requires about 1/2 million to a million of well off buyers a year accounting for the top 5-10% of buyers to skew the market to the high end, and that's where the real margin is that all automakers are now chasing after, even Hyundais and Jeeps of today. Some do okay, some like Jeep, well, not so much.

Here is where it gets interesting, this group of buyers aren't just on a public or private pension that meters out disbursements monthly. Instead. their money is in one or several accounts sitting there and they see the total pot. All it takes is 5-10% of that 1 in 20-33 people to say, "screw it, I might as well drive something NICE" to turn the entire car industry up to 12. They don''t need to save up, they don't need to tap their home equity, often time these people have multiple six to seven figures in their taxable brokerage account alone outside of retirement saving accounts. Something like 20$% of all new cars are bought with cash, and that percentage is likely higher in the upper end. Then the comes the the rest of the buyers, many try to keep up via loans and such. And that's how we end up with 120k Ford F350s today. Will 2026 be the year the auto industry reverts to the mean? Probably not.