I had a pretty strong reaction to the 2025 Chevrolet Blazer EV SS, but I’m not exactly sure it’s the one Chevy wanted me to have. It’s an impressive machine, no question: a 615 horsepower electric SUV with 303 miles of range. It’ll go from a dead stop to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds. It’s pretty roomy and comfortable and has all the modern electronic crap you’d expect – well, minus CarPlay or Android Auto, because GM is delusional – but I don’t really want to give it a review now, because I think there’s a bigger fundamental question that needs addressing here: in the context of a modern, powerful EV, what is “fun?”
I’m asking this question because this isn’t just any Blazer EV, it’s the SS version of the Blazer EV. And that doubled-S, despite its unfortunate sameness to another pair of S’s with a very sinister past, does mean something. It means performance, it means excitement, it means thrills, and, yes, it means fun.
Chevy knows this, too. Look, it’s the first thing they mention in their slide about what the SS designation means:
Fun! It’s supposed to be fun! And what do they mention specifically?
“…canyon roads, cruising the highway, or around town.”
The canyon roads thing came up multiple times when I asked Chevy’s PR folks about what they thought people could do with an electric SUV that was capable of hauling such prodigious amounts of ass. Almost all of them said “canyon carving!” eagerly in response to this question, and I’m sure that would be pretty fun.
Chevy let me take one of these on the track and whip it around a lot, and I have to say, for a tall, roughly 5,700-pound machine, it handled remarkably well, a bit under-steery but generally far better than looking at it would have you believe. You likely could take this out to the Angeles Crest parkway on Sunday morning with all the swarming Lotuses in their Skittles colors and keep up in a way that would definitely surprise everyone who was watching.
Would that be fun? Sure! More fun than a Lotus? No, not really, but a Lotus isn’t going to take six months’ worth of Costco smoked salmon and a bale of Kirkland-brand underpants back home with your partner and two kids in the car, is it? No, it isn’t.
But are normal Chevy Blazer EV owners going to actually take this thing out canyon carving? More than, like, twice? I’m not so sure. And the nice Chevy PR people also explained that, you know, it can make day-to-day driving more fun with all that horsepower, and merging onto on-ramps can be thrilling, and, yeah, okay, I don’t exactly doubt any of this, but the entry-model 300-horsepower Blazer EV LT, which starts at $44,600, can still get to 60 in a very respectable 5.7 seconds and costs about $17,500 less than the SS, probably can still be driven around town in a fun way and I’m sure merges onto highways just fine.
I drove the Blazer EV SS around on city streets and on the track, and yes it’s fast, and yes it’s impressive, but is it actually fun? And, maybe more importantly, if it has fun-potential within it, can that fun be accessed at speeds that you can actually hit without potentially facing jail time?
That’s the part I’m not so sure about, and I think that part of it has to do with the very nature of electric cars. I’m not anti-EV at all, and technically you could argue that they are superior to combustion cars in nearly every way. For example, the Blazer EV SS is the quickest accelerating SS-badged vehicle that Chevy has ever made, going all the way back to the original Impala SS of 1961.
But it’s precisely because of how good and smooth and efficient EV drivetrains are and how sloppy and inefficient and clumsy combustion engines are that dictates why one is fun and one, well, just isn’t. The Blazer EV SS does deliver on the performance and handling of what the SS badge means, but it completely ignores the most irrational, and therefore most important, part: the drama.
Most of the people who bought SS-badged Camaros or Chevelles weren’t tracking them on a regular basis – I mean, some did, and they were popular at dragstrips, of course – but they were having fun in their cars almost every time they drove them because these cars were loud, growly things that vibrated and shook like they had perpetual armored weasel fights going on under the hood. All those years of carmakers trying to reduce noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) were gleefully ignored, and engineers did all they could to maximize every one of those three letters. Because these were muscle cars, and muscle cars aren’t quiet and smooth.
You could put them in neutral at a stop light and rev their big V8s, making a lot of, to quote Macbeth, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
But I guess you were signifying something: power and potential and danger and madness, all while wasting gas and pumping a bunch of toxic chemicals into the air. Doing this kind of thing was toxic on literal and metaphorical levels, it was loud and stupid, it was juvenile, and, above all else, it was fun.
All of it was fun: the noise, the smells, the shaking, the shifting, the fighting with the steering, the raw mechanicalness of it all, all of the things that make it inefficient and uncomfortable and laborious, those are the things that give the car character.
There’s no drama to the Blazer EV SS; sure, Chevy tried to program some in, making you select the WOW (Wide Open Watts) mode to unlock an extra 100 hp and the car’s full potential, but it’s just like putting flame stickers on a beige office filing cabinet. The Blazer EV SS is just too damn good at what it does. Like all electric motors, the Blazer EV SS makes all its torque from 0 RPM, it delivers power smoothly and quietly, and at a stoplight the engine is completely dormant, wasting nothing, unable to be revved up like a horny teen is at the wheel because those words mean nothing in the context of an electrical motor.
When Chevy says the Blazer EV SS can be fun driving around town, what do they mean, exactly? That you can get to 40 mph in a neighborhood a little quicker? You can maybe squeal a tire making a fast turn into the Trader Joe’s lot? The thing has too much speed and power to actually really open up in day-to-day driving, and in normal driving it sounds and feels as quiet and smooth as any EV, so what’s the point?
You can’t really do anything with those 615 horses in 99% of your time behind the wheel, and those horses are so well-behaved you don’t even know they’re there until you stomp the pedal. So, does it even matter that they’re there at all?
An honestly fun daily driver is something that delivers drama and fun at speeds between 35-55. You don’t have to actually be going fast, but you need to feel like you are. There’s a reason why so many people love driving 115 hp Maza Miatas, and it’s because you can wring them out at speeds that would, by right, place you in the slow lane, and that’s exactly how it should be.
The Blazer EV SS is a very impressive and capable machine; it’s competent and comfortable, and very likely a reasonable choice for anyone looking for a good EV for the family. And, sure, you’ll have a blast driving it hard through the canyons precisely three times in the entire time you own the car, but without all of the callow and insipid and wonderful drama of a combustion car, where’s the fun, exactly?
So, this is my problem with the Blazer EV SS: it’s too good to be actually fun. It’s too efficient and refined and rational, and those aren’t really recipes for fun, at least not as we understand them. And if you want to argue that power and speed is fun enough unto itself, even then the Blazer EV SS makes no sense, because just where the hell is an average Blazer owner going to go to use these abilities? How many Blazer owners take their cars to the track?
If it’s not fun, what’s the point? Driving the Blazer just made me realize that for an everyday car to be truly fun, you have to be able to access that fun at normal street speeds, and, ideally, it should feel fun, in some good, dumb, fun ways. If EVs are going to reach that goal, we need to do something other than just adding power and speed.
Sorry, Chevy. It’s still impressive, though!
Wow. You know. Jeez. Such a first world problem.
I don’t have an EV, and I appreciate my eight-year-old car that is far more competent and problem-free than any other car I have owned before.
Going forward, if all things are equal (and they might not be given the manufacturers in the mix), functionality and/or styling are going to be the differentiator,
My coworker bought an Aprilia over a BMW motorcycle precisely for this reason; the BMW was just too composed and refined. Bikes aren’t rational purchases, even more so than cars, so you want it have that special character. And since the Aprilia is a raucous V4 it’s got plenty of that!
I think this is a very good point. I’ll argue that most modern vehicles are too good, too “perfect” to be fun, because fun is a human characteristic, and humans are incapable of perfection. I like my old rusty shitbox pickups, not because they’re perfect or faster than your digestive tract after Taco Bell…they’re fun because they’re imperfect. They’re noisy. They occasionally break down. They’re slow. But dammit, they’re fun and endearing, and isn’t that what car enthusiasm is all about? Personality, specifically a fun personality, often comes from being self-aware of one’s idiosyncrasies. I like to think fun cars are fun because of that honesty as well. That’s not something automakers can artificially create by throwing a 700hp in an ugly CUV.
I think automakers are stuck in this limbo where they’re trying to apply marketing techniques that worked on ICE cars to electric cars, because they aren’t sure how to differentiate their EVs quite yet.
IMO, particularly for “ordinary” cars like a Blazer, automakers should be amping up the refinement inherent in EVs.
Making a GT3 RS into an EV is a big loss of something special. Making a Blazer into an EV is getting rid of an old, zero-character powertrain and replacing it with a refined/luxurious feel that used to be reserved for S-Class level vehicles and above.
This is more and more true the lower in price range you go. The Equinox is a great example. Who will miss the tiny, loud, unrefined 1.5t when you can have a silent experience in the electric one?
Excellent take on it!
What’s missing from this review is how driving the SS is objectively different than the LT. Other than it accelerates much faster than, what appears to be, a quite adequate LT. And a comparison of how the two do, in general, and versus each other, in the canyon.
I have a friend with a lower trim level one of these and being in it is an impressively luxurious experience. Good job Chevy!
To me, some of the joy comes from the knowledge of the machinery at work. Appreciating a 20-step Rube Goldberg machine that turns on a desk fan, even if a ceiling fan is more reliable and efficient at the task.
It’s standing on the shoulders of 150 years of craftsmanship. Sure, an Apple Watch is a “better watch” than a Patek Philippe, but IYKYK.
I have a ~10-year-old Citizen Eco-Drive Blue Angels Navihawk. It recharges itself with an integral solar panel, checks in with one of three different shortwave time sources around the world once a day (and thus never off by more than milliseconds) and is water-resistant to 100 m (far deeper than me).
Wearing it versus a Patek Philippe, an Audemars Piguet or a Rolex is merely a different form of virtue signaling (Or none).
Other than maybe a Breitling Emergency watch that can transmit a distress signal at 121.5 MHz, I don’t want anything on my wrist that transmits “I have a shit ton of money.” “I like sparkly things.” “I want to be knocked over the head and robbed.”
I understand spending more for superior technology or fine craftsmanship, but collector watches aren’t something I’m interested in.
Conversely, give me a Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph over a BIC pen, any day.
When synthetic diamonds first looked like they were going to erase the DeBeers cartel, DeBeers said no synthetic diamond could be as perfect as one hauled out of the ground by a genuine slave. When synthetic diamonds became large and cheap enough for jewelry use, and were beautifully precise lumps of carbon, DeBeers said the imperfections in natural diamonds were what made them so much better.
When cars were noisy, slow, and suicidally unsafe, car reviewers said a car would be so much better if it sucked less. When cars became quiet, fast, and vastly safer, car reviewers say a car would be so much better if it sucked more.
These sequences are identically tedious. What are we even doing here?
Performance, like diamonds, is largely a fashion statement and holds little real value. Both are, therefore, at the mercy of the cycles of fashion. Fun with cars comes from the same places that make puzzles fun, or skiing fun. The degree to which cars are fashion and about being seen owning them, they become less fun.
I have been saying for years that most modern performance cars are mostly pointless and not much fun. Fun happens as things approach the limit, and a new M3 or Corvette can’t be at its limit anywhere but the track. EVs make it clear that performance numbers and fun aren’t closely related.
I think EVs can be fun, but they haven’t focused on that so far. They have focused on getting headlines with acceleration, range, etc., that they know sell units. Fun cars have been in somewhat short supply in ICE cars as well. The BRZ, Miata, GR Corolla, Civic Type-R or Si, VW GTI, and a few others are good options. They are less worried about spreadsheet numbers than making driving fun.
My Tesla does 0-60 in 4.8 seconds. That’s fast enough. And it’s 384 hp is enough. I’ll agree with Jason on this one to some extent. Having “fast” is fun every now and then. It’s nice on an onramp, of which I have several on my commute.
That said, the weight low down combined with fairly wide tires means the thing takes a corner like nobody’s business. Sadly I don’t do that very often since Tesla meats are expensive and EV’s wear them out quickly if the juice pedal is more than breathed upon.
Hunter S Thompson would be proud. So many quotables. This reminded me of the Ferrari story, but not really. Kudos, so well done
Slow Car Fast wins yet again.
My 25 Nissan Leaf S has all of 147 HP, and it’s faster than any ICE car I’ve seen near me.
Honestly I think that Mazda could easily make an electric Miata at a similar price point that you can stomp on the pedal with and get the ass to hang out.
I’d argue BEVs are the ultimate street legal performance cars as they got the acceleration to make them fun, instant passing power, and regen once you’re done passing, along with a range that encourages you to drive without speeding as the faster you go the more range you lose.
To me fun cars are not uber-powerful, uber expensive, and or uber rare.
They’re cars that can take you where you want to go in life, and make life a little less mundane.
My first car was a 1991 Audi 90 Quattro 20V that did not accelerate that great on account of only having 168 naturally aspirated HP at over 4000ft of elevation, and the thing handled so damn well it didn’t feel like fun till you were doing double the speed limit. Luckily I never crashed it. Then I got my 94 Toyota Pickup, and got introduced to the world of power sliding. I felt no need to speed in it, and ever once in a while on a 90° or smaller turn I’d give it a bit more gas than necessary and power slide though the corner, at school zone speeds! I’d argue slow speed drifting is a lot safer than doing double the speed limit on a windy mountain road because you got a car that handles that well.
I’d argue that an electric car that is easy to park, with good range, and that can take you, your friends, and all your shit where you want to go, all in a color you love is a fun car.
That seems to be Slate’s plan, and I’m all for it!
I used to have a beat-up old Kia Spectra that was completely base in every way, 126hp. God that thing was fun. I could go everywhere with my hair on fire, having a blast, but to anyone outside the car, it was just some guy driving down the road. I like that my car now does not feel sluggish, and has working A/C, but sometimes I miss that old smelly Spectra.
Hear, hear, the elephant in the room has not clothes.
Hear hear! The elephant in the room has no clothes.
Slow car fast.
This makes the Matt Farrah argument for walkable cities so obvious.
The problem with living in a society that requires you to have a car is that it requires you to have a *practical* car. Which is why you get 5000lb crossovers that are supposed to be “fun” because real life intrudes.
If you didn’t *need* to own a car to live in most of the U.S., you could ‘drive’ a radio flyer to the grocery store and then a Caterham 7 on the weekends.
Yes, I actually think good urbanism is 100% compatible with being a car guy. If I live somewhere walkable, the only time I’m using my car is because I want to, not because I have to. And that just makes me love my car and driving even more.
Add lightness to add lightheartedness