The 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray is a hybrid car that’s available in 1LZ, 2LZ, and 3LZ trim levels. It’s priced from $104,495 to $115,445.
People have clamored for an all-wheel-drive Corvette for decades. Sure, those voices largely belong to boomers who want to drive their cars in the snow, but the sentiment still carries.
Now, conveniently, the auto industry’s electric revolution combines with the C8 team’s understanding that AWD would be a logical way to achieve another performance push for the first mid-engine Corvette.
Chevy also hopes the first hybrid Corvette will begin warming public perception to the idea of a fully electric vehicle eventually coming out of the nameplate’s Bowling Green, Kentucky, assembly plant.
Designed to be equally at home on roads and racetracks, the 2024 Corvette E-Ray’s split personality comes courtesy of an enticing mix: It uses the standard Stingray’s chassis and engine along with the Z06’s wider bodywork and wheel/tire package.
The Z06’s massive Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes are also standard, as are Chevy’s latest generation of magnetic ride control and Michelin Pilot Sport all-season tires.
It’s not the hybrid you likely expect. According to the Corvette team, the biggest misconception when it comes to the E-Ray relates to what purpose its electrification serves.
Instead of employing an electric motor to minimize fuel use like most traditional hybrids, the E-Ray instead uses its motor primarily to increase performance.
The 6.2-liter V-8 engine handles the majority of propulsion duties, unless electric driving is commanded by one of the two EV drive modes. At no point in the course of normal operation does the car rely solely on electric propulsion. And no, it’s not a plug-in.
Instead, the E-Ray uses its high-voltage lithium-ion batteries to power the front wheels. Those batteries are situated inside the structural tunnel that runs through the passenger compartment.
The eAWD system manages power flow, using the electric front-drive to aid performance when needed, such as during hard acceleration and brisk cornering. The batteries discharge quickly during spirited driving; however, the system will never go below a minimum buffer level to ensure you won’t be left unexpectedly with rear drive only. That said, the system is only functional up to 150 mph, at which point the front motor disconnects.
While electric driving is not the primary function of the E-Ray’s all-wheel-drive system, Chevy’s engineers saw fit to equip the sports car with a pair of silent drive modes: Stealth and Shuttle. Stealth mode allows you to drive the car on battery power alone at speeds up to 40 mph.
The relatively small 1.9-kWh battery will last for 3-4 miles, depending on terrain. In Stealth mode, the gasoline engine engages when you demand more torque than the electric motor can provide or when accessories such as the HVAC system require it. Meanwhile, enabling Shuttle mode caps vehicle speed at 15 mph and disables the gasoline engine entirely.
Practically speaking, these amount to little more than party tricks. The two EV modes are selected by turning the console-mounted drive mode selector after entering the car but before pressing the start button. In this case, the order of operations matters.
Driving in Stealth feels much the same as any ordinary hybrid sedan. So long as throttle inputs remain faint and the road has no grade, the E-Ray slinks along happily while playing the government-mandated alert tone, which sounds like a funky mashup of sounds from The Jetsons and TRON.
Simple as they are, the twin EV modes did cause a bit of head scratching. Because enabling the system is done with the vehicle off, there is no practical way to use the silent driving once underway.
This means that if you would like to be a good neighbor and slip the ‘Vette back into the garage silently at the end of a long day, you’ll need to stop at the end of the block, shut the car off completely, and restart. It would be far more useful if it could be toggled on the fly like the standard drive modes.
On the road, the E-Ray is as comfortable as a Stingray with the standard magnetic dampers happily soaking up road undulations and expansion joins with ease.
Not much has changed inside compared to the “regular” Corvette, other than a new set of E-Ray information screens and the Charge+ button by the driver’s right knee that toggles the eAWD system into battery-save mode. A head-up display is also standard across the E-Ray lineup.
Wind and road noise remain, with the car’s wide all-season tires increasing the volume over the Stingray’s narrower rubber. The artificial touch of sci-fi whine added to the interior soundtrack was less than appreciated and eventually had us wondering if our tinnitus was flaring up. Interestingly, the interior seemed quieter at highway speeds with the convertible top retracted in a drop-top model.
Our time behind the wheel was greeted by beautiful late summer weather, but Chevy says the E-Ray can be a competent four-season cruiser, even managing snow-covered roads with little drama if the proper tires are fitted. To that end, Michelin will offer a snow tire sized for the meaty E-Ray wheels.
There are big shoes to fill when anything is touted as the quickest of all time, especially when it’s a Corvette. With a manufacturer-estimated 0-60 time of just 2.5 seconds, the Corvette E-Ray bests its Z06 brethren by 0.1 second. That’s not insignificant when you consider the Z06 is lighter and more powerful while wearing grippier rubber.
And the new model’s 10.5-second quarter-mile time is enough to get you in trouble at most tracks’ test-n-tune nights. To experience this firsthand, we headed out to Pike’s Peak International Raceway in Fountain, Colorado, where we were given time on the track’s infield road course and on a traditional parking lot autocross.
The E-Ray is properly quick when it comes to straight-line speed. Using launch control (after finding it buried in the menus) produces repeatable mid-2-second blasts to 60 with very little brain power involved. A good bit of why the car is so quick comes from the all-wheel drive’s added traction. Both the Stingray and Z06 exhibit a bit of wheel slip under hard acceleration, even with Corvette’s exceptional traction control. However, with the E-Ray’s front tires digging for additional grip, spinning the rears in a straight line proved challenging.
Although the car’s straight-line speed is impressive, cornering is where the E-Ray really shines. In real time, the car’s eAWD and Performance Traction Management systems consider surface friction, the tires’ traction capacity, and the driver’s intent to dynamically adjust torque distribution for the best chassis balance and corner exit speed and stability.
This delivers a quite natural torque feel without much perceived torque steer through the front axle. It means you can get back on the throttle sooner while racing through corners, which results in impressive exit speed without upsetting the car or chasing its tail. Shedding speed is low drama, as well, thanks to the E-Ray being fit with the Z06’s carbon-ceramic Brembo brakes.
Contrary to logic, this car will also drift. Part of the autocross experience was a skidpad where we were encouraged to initiate a drift and hold it for as long as we liked. Roast someone else’s thousand-dollar tires? Don’t have to ask us twice. Getting the car turning at the right speed and breaking the rear tires free of traction’s hold is the easy part.
Once the rear end begins to slide, driver instinct says to apply countersteer while feathering the throttle to maintain the slide. However, the best course of action with the E-Ray is to stay firmly in the throttle and maintain the smoke show with small steering corrections. Lifting out of the gas even the slightest bit allows the front tires to grab, and the fun is done.
After spending two days and hundreds of miles behind the wheel of the new E-Ray, we’re confident in saying this may just be the perfect real-world Corvette. The car’s split personality seamlessly melds the Stingray’s highway charm and the Z06’s brute racetrack performance.
The E-Ray is a comfortable highway cruiser and performs nearly as well at the track as its racy stablemate. With a starting price less than the Z06’s, along with the Stingray’s gentlemanly grand-touring manners, the new E-Ray is a tough proposition to pass up.
