There Will Not Be An Electric Chevrolet Corvette Available Anytime Soon

The Chevrolet Corvette will continue with a V8 engine for the long term, as parent company General Motors will not rush into an electric variant “just to meet some regulation,” its engineering chief told Autocar.

Speaking to this publication at the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed, General Motors’ chief performance engineer, Tony Roma, said that while electric cars are the future, plans for an electric Chevrolet Corvette have not yet been officially drawn up.

“We’re talking about what it would take to make a car capable enough, but right now it’s still science fiction,” he said.

That’s despite General Motors recently revealing a fully completed Corvette EV concept. Instead, the sports car will continue to be powered by a V8, either in naturally aspirated form (as long as regulations allow) or with a hybrid element, like the E-Ray version.

However, while rivals like Ferrari and Lamborghini have added plug-in hybrid powertrains to their models, a PHEV Corvette is not planned, according to Roma.

Roma says, “I don’t think the plug-in is worth it—the weight, the cost, the complexity.”

Looking ahead, Roma said that when it finally arrives, the electric Chevrolet Corvette will have to be “interesting” instead of just fast, as the 0-100 km/h acceleration time becomes a “meaningless metric” because “every car is incredibly fast.”

Instead, the brand will have to consider how to be different because customers will soon be driving a “brutally fast [electric] sedan” every day and therefore “want something different.” Roma points out, “And that’s our challenge—to come up with something different, something interesting.”

Roma added that General Motors will not accelerate the development of an electric version just to keep the car on sale in Europe after 2035. “We will not build a car just to meet that regulation,” he said.

“I’m not going to make an electric vehicle and put a Corvette badge on it” if it’s not worthy of the “70-plus years of history” of the brand, Roma said. “Nobody wants that. I’m sorry, I’ll stand firm behind it. The badge means something to people.”

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