Remember those rumors of an electrified Corvette? Sure you do, it’s all you would talk about! You even showed me this article from the Old Site that had leaked documents showing how the hybrid Corvette would place an electric motor up front, driving the front wheels, to make a hybrid, all-wheel-drive Corvette. We haven’t seen it in official form yet, but now a member of the MidEngineCorvette forum called KK87 was playing with Chevy’s online “visualizer” for the C8 ‘Vette, when they got bold and tried selecting a 2024 model year. The result was pictures of the 2024 Corvette E-Ray, along with the previously-unseen logo. Jackpot!
The E-Ray itself is essentially the current C8, without really significant visual changes, though there does appear to be an E-Ray badge just ahead of the side air intake, and it seems to have the side aero strakes found on the Z07.
The logo design for the E-Ray is pretty conventional sports car-type stuff, with the E forming something that could be seen as an electrical plug, with a blue color often used to connote electrical things.
Our Corvette sleuth found what appears to be the color choices for the E-Ray:
…which is a good set of real, vibrant colors, confirming my theory that fun colors primarily exist only on cheap cars and high-end sports cars, the ends of the market where people are either too rich or too poor to give a shit about people who are afraid of color. I like the choice of Cacti here, too.
They also screengrabbed the wheel selection:
…the ones on the car there leave plenty of space to see the massive brake rotors, and remind me a bit of starfish, keeping with the aquatic stingray/ray motif.
From the rear, it looks like the hot air exhaust grilles are body-colored instead of the more often-seen black, but it’s possible that’s an option, too. If they’re only body-colored on the E-Ray, that could be an easy way to visually identify these when they hit the road.
Another person captured a shot of the dash:
Forum member KK87 notes that the redline appears to be the same, and the steering wheel has one more button.
[Editor’s Note: Here’s me crawling around a largely-disassembled C8 Corvette:
It’s fairly obvious that, from the onset of the C8’s development, GM package-protected for a big battery in that center tunnel, which is not there for exhaust (since it’s rear-engine) or for drivetrain components on rear-drive cars. -DT].
Even if we knew this was coming, who doesn’t like a good leak? Good sleuthing, KK87.
Read more on The Autopian
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All the time that I owned Corvettes, all the other guys agreed that Corvette should be it’s own brand/division. The reason was the abysmal sales and service at most of the Chevy dealerships. The owner of a $ 70,000+ Corvette is treated like any other Chevy owner. Not like the owner of the most premium performance car that GM builds. Unlike some other brands, owners don’t experience exceptional sales and service at most dealers. They are treated the same as any Low-mid level car.
That is the real reason every owner wanted Corvette to be its own brand/division.
Now GM is talking about doing exactly the opposite. Slap the Corvette nameplate on an SUV, etc, and sell them alongside America’s Sportscar. No attention paid to what their customers have clamored for. Exactly the opposite. GM is not Porsche, and does not provide a premium quality experience. So, comparisons are moot.
I know that I’m not the only Corvette guy that prefers the look of the C6 to the C8. I wonder if Adrian has seen one in person. I enjoy how he can dissect the design, and explain how it works or doesn’t work, and why.
The rims remind me of the starfish thing from Suicide Squad. I can live with the E-Ray name.
That actually makes total sense, come to think of it. Consider how much easier it is to adapt a mid-engined Corvette platform to an electric drivetrain, compared to the front-engined one. Looks like someone was thinking a few steps ahead planning this transition.
All these comments, and no one is going to mention how much better this thing looks with the side scoops and everything else body-colored? All that black plastic made it look so cheap.
Ok. I’m over “E” designators for EV’s. We get it. There are batteries in it. Anyway, I’m sure the electric ‘Vette is fine.
Yeah the E-Ray logo looks a bit plug-y and electrical blue, but it is also a pretty decent homage to the stingray logo.
(I would post an image but … ya know)
I’ve owned two C6 ‘Vettes. Great cars. Beautiful cars. No Chevy bow tie, or badges all over it. I had lots of people think they were Ferraris. My favorite model of modern times. After those, they started with the multi-creased, boy racer , hot wheels look. I’m not a fan of that look. I had hopes for the C8, but they kept the hot wheels styling. Not beautiful, or graceful. And, it doesn’t hit you from the pictures, but in person, it looks incredibly wide. I know it’s got otherworldly performance, and I would own one if I could.
This iteration with the electric motor will slot in between the regular C8, and the ZO6. More set up for the daily driver owners who don’t want the high-strung ZO6, but want more than the standard ‘Vette.
C6 is gorgeous. It and its contemporary 997 911 are imo the 2 prettiest sports cars since IDK maybe the 60s or 70s?
That’s an awesome shade of green 😀
I’m whelmed. I’ve always really liked the C8 from a design and engineering standpoint and to be honest I think a lot of the “C8 OVERRATED” takes are driven by hipsters and the contrarian committee. It’s objectively a good car from a performance standpoint.
That being said, even though I consider myself to be an environmentally conscious person there’s no way in hell I’d opt for this over one of the V8s. I guess there’s an argument for it if you’re going to daily it but I’d personally never buy a dedicated sports car as a daily…it would always be a weekend ride, and I’d imagine most Corvettes are bought for similar reasons.
I’d feel some guilt if I was driving a V8 to work every day and getting like 9 MPG in traffic but if I’m just ripping it on the weekend on country roads? Eh. The emissions and gas consumption are small potatoes at that point and even spirited backroad driving doesn’t usually produce the worst fuel economy overall. My Kona N usually does 22-24 or so when I’m out ripping it on empty roads which is better than its city ratings.
That being said-I think depreciation is going to hit these first gen EVs like a freight train. Due to how quickly technology is evolving they’re going to be dated and surpassed about as fast as cell phones are…and things like this, the Taycan, etc aren’t going to hold their value in several years when buying new will essentially double the range.
At that point there are going to be some interesting secondhand EV buys IMHO. It wouldn’t surprise me to see first gen EVs in reasonable shape selling for way less than 50% of their original MSRP. At that point they may be compelling buys as far as performance is concerned if you can live with the lackluster range.
Just to clarify, this still has a V8 in back, but an electric motor up front making it an AWD hybrid.
Upon further reading I think you’re correct…which makes it a potential answer to my “can we please hybridize more V8s” plea. Pairing them with electric motors could potentially improve fuel economy and emissions to keep them around for years to come. I’d like to think it’s a solution we can all agree upon but then again who knows…
I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made to do that in vehicles like large sedans, or trucks and SUVs. Vehicles that will accumulate a lot of miles.
I think you inadvertently made the case against doing so in your first post. Emissions from two seat sports cars are miniscule in the scheme of things, and at least to me, the hybrid/AWD feels like it would detract from the driving experience in a tangible way. I don’t feel nearly the same opposition to the S63 from earlier this week as I do with this, even though conceptually they are the same.
I’m not sure what the realistic solution is. Obviously a gas tax is the cleanest and simplest. No one buying an expensive sports car to drive 3000 miles a year is going to care, but a truck owner might. I just wish we had the political will to do so vs bandaid solutions that are worse for everyone but easier to sell to low-info voters.
What in the actual fuck I completely agree with you on something ????
Not to worry, I’m sure the condition is temporary.
Ah, hence the need for side scoops.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the rate at which battery tech is improving. Consider the smartphone analogy you made. The reason those are obsolesced is due to rapid advancement in semiconductor technology for mobile devices. They have always used lithium batteries, and indeed battery life in smartphones has increased due to packaging (can fit bigger battery) and efficiency (uses less power to function). Nowadays, even a mid-range smartphone can last for several years. Think back to the early ’00s when a laptop became unusably slow within a year or two, while now will 5+.
Big leaps in battery tech are very rare, and take a huge amount of time to bring to commercialization. John Goodenough started working on lithium batteries in 1980 (building on research starting in the 60s), and it was almost 3 decades before they saw widespread use. Current (pun!) improvements to lithium batteries are mostly related packaging and manufacturing- small, incremental reductions of mass and cost, with minor chemistry tweaking. Right now, we don’t even know what the next great leap forward looks like in terms of chemistry and design. IMO, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of an equivalent advancement (nickel/copper -> lithium) reaching commercial viability before 2035 at the earliest. And while I’m not a gambler, that’s something I’m actually willing to put money on.
I’ve been saying this for years! I have to think there’s some battery breakthroughs coming in the next decade, now that pretty much every automaker is electrifying. Depending on how much of a breakthrough it is, in 10 years today’s EVs may be considered overweight dinosaurs. But, we have to start somewhere, and I’m thankful for the folks who can afford
Factory C8 wheels just all look so cheap
Looks like the same sort of wheels you can find at discount tire.
Maybe it’s because I’m watching Andor right now, but “KK87” sounds like a droid designation. “J-Wan Torchobi, you once posited a theory about homunculi existing inside Pixar cars, which was just messed up. In spite of that, I’ve stored the stolen plans for the 2024 Corvette E-Ray inside this KK87 unit, and I’m trusting you to bring them to the Autopian Alliance. Help me, J-Wan Torchobi…you’re our only hope…well, you’re A hope, I guess. Not our only hope. I mean, there are others. That Tracy guy might be interested, too, probably. Or if we can get Streeter to stop talking about campers for 5 seconds…”
I think this leak was intentional to build hype. Free press and all that to gauge the market before the official release. While it’s possible that someone released the webpage earlier than expected, a few hours of “let them look” isn’t that easy to dismiss either.
Also as a Vette fan basically my entire life (I turn 47 in a a few weeks and I fell in love at 3 if you ask my mom when I saw my first old school Stingray) I really like the look of the C8. It took a bit for me to grow into the C7, and it was the first one to make me have to fall in love. I have a friend in Detroit (who happens to be a GM engineer) and I saw my first one there in the dark copper color on the road on a cloudy day and it was just heart stopping gorgeous. Hearing the Z06 on the track you can’t believe you’re hearing an American car. My wife, thought it was a Ferrari, just by the sound. I can’t disagree. Now this…this, is pretty amazing, in my opinion. When you look, what 10 years ago at the P1, 918 and the LaFerrari with these drivetrains to get that level of power, and here we are with a Corvette with that power for roughly 10% of that cost (or less), says a lot of what GM engineers have put together. I can’t wait to see, cost, performance and everything. It’s always been the poor man’s Ferrari, and that’s not so much the case anymore as it’s started to rise in price, but it’s still one hell of a bargain for what you get.
This is better than what the EV Mustang SUV naming. In general looks like the Vette with and E-Ray would be Electric Eel (that is where I am going darn it).
That E-Ray font is in a nice Viagra Blue, coincidence? I think not.
To be fair, I don’t think the usual Corvette crowd is going to want anything to do with this. This screams “millennial tech bro/social media influencer trying to flex” to me. I’d bet a sizable chunk that 90% or more of New Balance, Budweiser, and Skynyrd crowd will opt for the *Clarkson impersonating an American voice* V8 motor rather than this.
On Corvetteblogger, the old farts are complaining about an influncer getting a Vette….
https://www.corvetteblogger.com/2022/12/07/video-emelia-hartford-unboxes-and-takes-delivery-of-her-2023-corvette-z06/#comments
Sweet Jesus those comments. I can’t imagine dedicating that much of my mental function to manufacturing that level of vitriol. Like, wow. And my favorite might be the comment bitching about entitlement while at the same time being extremely entitled. These people, man…
Mind-Boggling
The entitlement thing is particularly rich (pun intended) when the main age bracket of people spouting the accusation have had the most privileged economic existence of the last 100 years or so. Like…okay Carl, college cost $17 a semester when you went, your first job out of school paid the equivalent of $90,000 in today’s money, and you got automatically promoted with a 10% raise every 3 years for being a white male….but THE YOUTHS are entitled because they’re asking for college to cost less than $80,000 a year and for there to be some car options out there that aren’t contributing to the world possibly becoming uninhabitable in their lifetimes? The AUDACITY!
…that being said here’s my mandatory “not all boomers are like this” statement. I’ve met plenty of folks in that age bracket who don’t act like this/I’m sure a Corvette forum is just about the worst possible sample that there is.
Well, they aren’t called “The Me Generation” for nothing.
Excerpt from above comments: “I think that a lot of us real Corvette owners and enthusiasts are sick of….”
So there are fake owners and enthusiasts?
Of course there is., to them. We’re talking about one of the elitest subsets of the culture
Look, you have no idea how many people show up at Corvette meets with some Opel GT they’ve shoehorned a tiny V8 into, trying to pass it off as the real thing. Wait, wait, I’m being informed that that has never happened ever and would be a pretty good laugh if it did.
I can only conclude that “real” as an adjective applied to people who definitely exist actually means “asshole”. See non-Native Americans who call themselves “real Americans” for another example. This may also explain clearly scripted “reality” television.
I always thought they should’ve put the Buick 215/Rover V8 in the Opel GT. They had all the ingredients to make it a proper baby Corvette, and they were even selling them through Buick dealerships so the Buick connection was there. I guess they just sold the 215 V8 to Rover too soon.
I lasted 5 seconds: “The pandering to influencers is infuriating but at least the high pitched squealing in this video is actually coming from a girl and not some low T soy poisoned lisping sissy like the other videos that keep popping up.” Sir, if that’s “popping up”, I don’t want to see your browsing history..
Regardless of generation, guys who feel the need to “flex” are always around.
So they’ve saving the Zora name for something else?
The Zora will most likely be the DOHC V-8 with the turbos in the valley, like the Caddy Blackwing motor that I still am convinced it’s based on.
The Z in Z06, ZR-1, ZR1, Z/28, Z71 etc already stands for Zora
Maybe that’ll be the Z06 version of this car? Or maybe it’ll be the Zeeray?
Supposed to be a package with a twin turbo version of the Z06 flat plane DOHC V8 plus a hotter version of the E-Ray’s electric drivetrain. Claiming 1000+HP. Not sure if they plan on throwing a ZR-1 in the ring or calling anything “King Of The Hill”.
Although a Corvette ad featuring Hank Hill would be fantastic. He’d be all ambivalent about it. “It sure is a nice looking car and fast too, I tell you what. But expensive. So buy it if you can afford it and drive responsibly. Thank you and good night.”
E-Ray tis a silly name.
Why do car companies feel like so many electric vehicles need to tell you their electric via their name? And placing an “E” before or after the name is just about the worst way to do it (e-Tron, Mach-E, EUV…)
CorEVtte
It reminds me of the mid 2000s when everything was i-something because they wanted to be like the i-Pod
It’s easy shorthand. If electric vehicles ever become ubiquitous, we’ll finally see them move away from it. When my parents (who pretty much refuse to inform themselves) go car shopping, that e tells them it’s electric. For people who do their research before buying a car, it seems silly. But we aren’t the majority, for some reason.
Iyay inkthay E-Ray isyay ayay eatgray amenay…
It is a dumb name, great concept though. I’m not usually one for de-badging, but this is a case where I would absolutely see doing that
same reason they tack H onto every name that was suddenly Hybrid. IT give the car something for the people looking at the car on the road to see and understand.
I’m still hung up on the “Mach E” name. Isn’t “Mach” supposed to be a ratio of velocity relative to the speed of sound? If so, “Mach” followed by anything other than a number makes as much as sense as saying “Mach Taco”, or something equally nonsensical.
Although, I’ve been informed by a mathemagician friend that “E” represents some mathematical constant and therefore could be a number in some contexts. I doubt that was what Ford was going for with that stupid name, though.
“makes as much as sense as saying “Mach Taco””
Mach Taco… sounds like a great name for a taco place with fast service!
The actual name would be Macho Taco, but the “o” fell off the sign and replacing it is low priority.
I expect cutesy EV names to age about as gracefully as all those gee-whiz sounding names they had fir automatic transmissions. Super-ultra-dyna-hydro-torque-glide-flite-o-matic!
It’s because the bulk of consumers are ignorant when it comes to cars and can’t be bothered to research which cars are EVs, but automakers know that if they put a big obvious “E” in the name, then they’ll at least ask “Issat a ‘lectric car?” And then the salesman can take it from there.
The internet always finds a way.
Over the horizon I hear a million winga dinga voices cry that the Corvette has never been sold without a V8, and I quietly laugh to myself in C1.
I mean this one still has a V8?
& that’s why C1 is best.
I6 FTW.
Ya know, I see a common opinion that the C8 isn’t that good looking of a car, but I just don’t understand why.
Even in that AARP 2001 Buick century gold color, it still looks like a supercar with a face that is equal parts aggressive and somehow friendly, and that’s just rad as all hell to me.
In pictures, and especially renders, I like it. However when I see one in traffic, or walk past one it just feels kind of awkward somehow.
Like the front, middle, and back are from different cars that somehow fit together but don’t match.
I like the front and the side, but I cannot accept the back. It doesn’t fit at all and looks like a slab of whatever.
Completely agree. I mean, it’s a little aggressive for me personally, but it’s a legit supercar performance-wise, I have no problem with it looking like one. It’s one of only a handful of cars that have ever caught my son’s eye (he’s not big into cars, but he pays attention).
I’ll never get one into my garage, but I sure wouldn’t kick one out!
As I said in my comment below…I think a lot of it is just hipster enthusiasts being contrarian. As soon as something receives a ton of praise a lot of peoples’ responses turn into “well ACTUALLY this thing is BAD!”. I’m a huge music nerd and it literally happens all the time with albums.
As soon as a record or artist receives a lot of praise there are always throngs of people that come out of the woodwork to explain why it’s undeserved. I think a lot of it comes from wanting to prove that your taste is more interesting that regular peoples’…and of course groupthink takes over after a while.
I personally try to form my own opinions of things as much as I can…and to be quite honest I’m a bit of a normie in that I generally think that when something earns universal praise it’s probably for good reason and worth your time.
Hahaha, yeah. Like the nickelback thing.
Wait, am I being contrarian because most people don’t like it?
I like my sports cars curvaceous and flowy, or else wedgy and futuristic. The C8 is just angles angles angles everywhere. I am struggling to think of a busier-looking car currently on the market, especially given all that black trim. My eye never knows what to do with it or where to go. It’s just neverending creases, edges, and folds.
And then there’s dat ass. It’s like somebody inflated the back end of a Camaro, and then jumped up and down on it.
Mind you, I didn’t hate it until I saw it in real life. In photos, it’s OK. Not the prettiest ‘Vette ever, but fine. In person, I just can’t get past how little I like the looks. This opinion isn’t coming from anywhere but myself, either—everyone I was reading seemed to like the look in the runup to its release, but the first time I saw one in the wild I was so disappointed.
I’m over the wedge, and it’s hard to do flowy artfully enough.
My first glance at the C8 photos was similar to yours: “What dafuq they doing with all those angles?”
But shortly after, I realized that putting all these together just works and that this angular construction is in its own way, nearly as initially shocking as the first Countach, and much more attractive.
Once I saw one in person, I was fully won over. I love the C8. Including dat ass.
I’d rather have round taillights, or some other elements of Corvette heritage included in the design even though I don’t like the earlier models nearly as much, but that’s minor and unnecessary criticism.
I’m drooling over them and they are literally motivating me to get myself in gear and create some additional income. I can hardly wait for my first track day in a C8 Corvette.
Iyay eallyray ikelay ethay ewnay E-Ray…
Just wow
That was a really long way to go for a what may generously be called a pun.
Congrats, I think.