First Drive: Corvette E-Ray, In-Depth with Chief Engineer

In this Jay Leno’s Garage EXCLUSIVE: Corvette’s Executive Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter comes back to the garage brining with him the very latest and possibly the greatest Corvette ever made; the 2024 Corvette E-Ray! Jay and Tadge go DEEP on the design mechanics of this (hybrid) beast, before they take the E-Ray for a drive. Strap yourselves in, this is truly an episode for the ages!

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A new video every Monday! Visit Jay Leno’s Garage, the Emmy-winning series where Jay Leno gives car reviews, motorcycle reviews, compares cars, and shares his passion and expertise on anything that rolls, explodes, and makes noise. Classic cars, restomods, super cars like the McLaren P1, sports cars like Porsche 918 Spyder and Camaro Z28, cafe racers, vintage cars, and much, much more.

Boy it’s great I mean it just feels so confident so solid so Seamless oh yeah that pulls nicely it does make you feel proud that it’s americ technology it’s American work it’s a union shop it’s really great it’s it’s amazing what you can do it’s such a high-tech product it’s arguably the most complicated consumer product in the market and it’s such an aspirational

Vehicle people may dream of Ferraris and McLaren but that’s just dreaming this is a car you can actually but compared to what everything else that has equal power and speed cost it’s two to three times the cost of this car welcome on the episode of Jay L’s garage once again being visited by

Automotive royalty now see when they say that most times it involves a car that cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars this time it’s not about price but about quality we’re going to take a look inside and outside on the new eay Corvette and it’s pretty

Unbelievable when you see how this thing is built and put together I I I’m proud that it’s an american-built car built in a union shop built at a pretty good price we don’t have an exact price in and around $100,000 is what it’s going to cost all-wheel drive the fastest

Accelerating Corvette ever produced at least up to this point and we have it here first and when we go through this you will see in this chassis and all the other pieces just how advanced it is you know a lot of times when you build a car

A little bit less than what they’re building somewhere else you cut Corners I I don’t think there’s any Corners cut in this the materials uh the efficiency of how it’s done it’s it’s pretty unbelievable now before we take a look at the outside and drive it and we’ll be

The first people to drive it right here on the show we’re going to talk with Taj Jer he is the chief engineer of Corvette uh and you know he always keeps secrets from me you know last time I went down to see him we we did some laps at over

200 miles an hour I said is there a minut in Corvette well we don’t really know so this is the guy you want to have holding your secrets but he’s going to reveal some of them today T come on in here my friend great to see you J good

To see you I I’m just stunned looking at this you know as I was telling him before when the C8 first came out it was priced around $65 to $770,000 I thought no it’s probably going to have a you know just a standard GM transmission or something no the amount of magnesium

Aluminum Exotic Metals it’s certainly the equal of anything the Europeans are doing at probably a third of the price so you’ve got to be real proud of this oh we’re so happy with the way the car has been you know you know everybody’s embraced it all around the world uh

Obviously we see it here in America uh but really globally we’re doing right-hand drivve so we’re selling in Australia and UK and Japan so it’s really been embraced around the world and the reception here has been phenomenal um it’s hard to believe it’s been four years since we revealed it but

We’ve actually already sold 120,000 wow C8 so uh you think about the entire Seventh Generation life cycle that was about 190,000 probably sometime next year we’ll pass the total number of Corvettes built in the last generation car well and there’s certainly a good reason why people are buying it you you

Know I love the fact that you’re not afraid to take a chance you know uh so many other manufacturers have to stick to tradition you know I know I remember the the fit Corvette owners the tail lights aren’t round it’s not a Corvette oh my God you know whereas this now this

Is a totally New Concept all-wheel drive all the time y do we call it all-wheel or four-wheel what do you call it it’s all-wheel drive all wheeel Drive okay hybrid car but and you can run on electric for what four five miles something like that yes it’s it’s a what

We call Neighborhood exit or stealth mode it’s a mode you can put it in if you want to just keep it pure electric right um so you think about like a lot of us who work on the car when you start a Corvette it’s an event you know it it

Makes a fair amount of noise and sometimes you’re getting up in the morning or you don’t want to wake up your neighbors you can use it to exit get out of your neighborhood and then start it someplace else wake up somebody else’s neighbors instead of your own or

If you’re sneaking in late at night and you want every know what time you’re coming in you can well I just love the fact that you have Corvettes for whatever your situation is you’ve got the ZO6 which is the out andout performance car a little bit lighter you’ve got this one the fastest

Accelerating you’ve got touring car I mean it’s almost like a whole well it is a separate brand I guess almost the Standalone so take us through here what we have here this is the chassis for the new C8 e- Ray uh up here this is our

Electric drive here uh battery is in the center tunnel is that correct that’s correct and one of when we first started thinking about a mid-engine architecture one of the advantages even though we needed a structural backbone because all Corvettes are convertible so they don’t

Have a roof so you have to do big body structure elements down the center of the car to make it very stiff so we knew we had to have that tunnel but there’s no drive shaft there’s no exhaust that goes through it like on prior Generations so we were thinking what are

We going to do with that how could we use that in the back of our mind we’d had customers who said why don’t you guys do all drive and so he looked actually at a mechanical all-wheel drive where you’d run a shaft up forward the engine to the front axle versus electric

And at that time we GM was starting to go heavy into electric we had a lot of electric technology and so when we looked at the mechanical versus Electrical uh Alternatives just on the pure basis of what it does for the car the electric one out uh the big

Advantage of electric of course is you can get energy back every time you hit the brakes or lift the throttle you use regen on the front axle and you fill that battery up instead of when you hit brakes it jaw goes to heat and you’d never get that energy back now is the

Regen adjustable or is it set it’s set there’s different modes um so typically it tries to maintain a certain battery state of charge so you always have that all-wheel drive capability with different modes it changes the calibration a little bit so it might Target a higher state of charge or even

Be more aggressive and Target a lower state of charge such that you’re you know doing herol laap on a track for example so I’m gonna use everything the battery’s got to make the car as fast as possible this battery is so small it’s it’s interesting the the battery is 1.9

Kilowatt hours so that’s about as much energy as in one cup of fuel wow so it’s very small amount of energy say okay what what good is that what good it is is that the energy in one cup of fuel is about equivalent to this car at top

Speed so you think about a breaking event at top speed you can get the equivalent of that amount of energy energy back into the battery so in a gas car you burn a cup of fuel it’s gone forever in this car you get a lot of it

Back and the amount of energy in a cup of fuel I remember somebody I did this once they took a cup how big an explosion would it be a cup of fuel and he needed just a huge amount of battery I mean just batteries all in the room just

To equal this in terms of how much actual power is in a cup you know gasoline is a is a great fuel amazing substance it’s an amazing and to find something better is really hard but we’re getting there and we’re getting closer right and this car really

Takes advantage of The Best of Both Worlds and that was our idea some people as you know are scared off on electrification oh it’s going to be the end of sports cars going be end of fun cars if you look at this car and you drive this car as you will do you’ll

Find it’s nothing but positive you don’t lose anything you get more power you get all-wheel drive you know very assured handling in all situations you still keep the front trunk you get better fuel economy because of the regen you get everything better and nothing worse and

You’ll see the way it sounds you still have the beautiful sound of the V8 but when you really get on it and you can hear that engine really pumping out 160 horsepower they blend together in this great Crescendo as the car just Rockets ahead well this is the fastest

Accelerating Corvette you can get even a more than this Z6 correct yeah even though it’s got a a lower power to weight ratio than the Z6 in terms of 0 to 60 and quar mile this car gets off the line as you’ll see it just bangs off

The line the good thing about electric motors is infinite torque you know all the torque immediately at zero RPM so right off the line this car just jumps out ahead of and the other thing I I like is the fact that I remember saying to you oh man what happens when you

Tweak this it’s got to be impossible to fix but everything here is components yes so when we started actually in the Seventh Generation we started doing all aluminum underbody structures we had to think about what’s the repair procedures and so the way we join the car a lot of

It isn’t welded anymore a lot of it’s glued together and and screwed together so with fixtures you can actually put it back together you don’t need specialized welding equipment and then we build pieces of the car sub assemblies in our production factory so they’re all dimensionally accurate so a body shop

Can plug those and and put them in the car and the also the fact that even with all these components you still have a trunk you know I I’ve got an NSX which is a nice car but you can’t carry anything y I mean you have maybe a

Toothbrush or something but you know I can’t C if I have a passenger you I I can’t even bring the the V I use because this doesn’t fit the person would have to hold it well you still got you it’s still got that Corvette usability which

I find y That’s why we say it’s a Swiss army knife it still does everything well just like uh stingr A6 you can take off the top it goes in the back you still have your whole front trunk which is the size of a airline roller board uh bag

And we find people absolutely love the the two trunks so whichever direction approach the car there’s there’s a space for you to set something the shapes are different so like grocery bags fit uh great in the front they stand up they don’t fall over and you said something

Which I didn’t realize that every Corvette is a convertible cuz I I keep thinking in the old days you’d build you know you you’re really this well the strongest structure would be the fixed roof and then when they cut the roof off there’s more bracing underneath but you start with the strongest possible

Convertible chassis you can build right which is I didn’t realize that until you just said it yeah actually it’s been that way since the fifth generation car yeah we started even though we did do some fixture we started with a convertible and that’s why you’ve seen the backbone uh Tunnel construction

Since then and it’s not just a tunnel that you see it’s closed on four sides right and that makes a very stiff structure for torsion uh that bottom plate is it’s very very important it’s carbon fiber on uh on the other z6s we actually use the battery pack as that

Reinforcement on this car and the other thing I find amazing is the Exotic Metals how are you guys able to have this when other manufacturers charge so much is it just efficiency of uh is it volume is it the the power of GM and and and suppliers there some of that the

Economies of scale of being part of General Motors uh we have really good relationships with a lot of our suppliers uh but really since 1953 this car has been a mosaic of materials it’s been alternative materials don’t just make everything out of steel which is

The way it was and actually still is in the Auto industry uh but really over 70 years of evolution we’ve found the right mix of materials between what you see here mostly aluminum but you don’t see here is all the composits you see some of them back here but we Bond all those

Composits on so it’s a really a mix of the best material in every place whether it’s aluminum in some places steel whether it’s magnesium whether it’s carbon f fiber whether it’s glass reinforced uh composits every part is designed specifically for what it has to do and

But it it it’s not there because it’s cheaper it’s there because it’s the best part you just be able to do it less expensively my favorite thing when with my McLaren I always tell people when when I crack this I can either get another splitter for the front I can or

I can get a Corvette the same PR I here’s a piece of plastic I need to have this or this and it’s just I it just makes me laugh every time time I think of it because how is that possible how often do you have to buy a new splitter

For your M uh it’s happened with California roads please please all right take us some more what what we have so um we’re really proud of this Drive Unit you know I mentioned you still have the frunk it’s uh a magnesium case it’s actually all aluminum Fasteners it’s extremely Compact and no

Connection with the rear again once again to reiterate this is not a drive shaft all all-wheel drive you get the Torx no this is a whole separate Drive Unit right up there yes it’s completely modular front and rear I think we’re the only car in the world that does that

Almost every other hybrid packages Motors between the engine and the trans right so the motors actually drive you know coaxially um this is a completely separate Drive Unit so the big challenge for us was how do you make this feel to the driver like one propulsion system so

That was very very challenging uh we started from the beginning we didn’t want to lose what’s great about a mid- engine car so the weight distribution that sense of low polar moment of inertia that the car turns in immediately when you steer so we didn’t

Want to load up the front axle with a bunch of mass so everything about this is extremely light extremely compact totally bespoke to us it’s actually that whole Drive Unit and the battery that we’ll talk about is built in Brownstown Michigan so it’s about 40 mil from where

We designed the car and the where the Proving Grounds test the car and we do everything there’s no no shared Parts with any other car whether it’s NGM or outside even the motor windings are done there we do those in housee just so this is bespoke to Corvette completely

Bespoke there’s no parts bin thing here weighs about 80 lbs for that whole Drive Unit and the really cool thing if you’re looking at this if you live in Australia or England or Japan or you can’t get a left-hand driver it’s not legal this literally take it and you move it right

Over here cuz as you can see with this component you don’t have a steering column and you don’t have all the things in the away so it’s easy to build a world car isn’t it yeah a mid-engine car lets the front be very symmetrical uh you don’t have an engine and all the

Other stuff conflicting you know uh having to move parts and plumbing around so we can translate the driver over to the other side we translate the brakes and things over but since you don’t have anything in the way the engine it actually translates relatively easily and how many radiators I’m I’m trying to

Count radiators here go this is pretty amazing how how many in here I don’t know what the total is we could walk around and count but it’ll take a while I don’t know if you have enough time a lot there’s a lot um so when we did the

Z6 and this wide body we we stuffed it full of heat exchangers to cool that you know track monster car we actually have as much cooling on this car and more radiators cuz there’s more to cool right that Drive Unit that has to be cooled the Power Electronics uh in the battery

Which we’ll talk about has to be cooled the battery cells themselves also have to be cooled and this car is completely track capable which is not typical of any electrified cars uh so we try to keep the temperatures down as much as possible plus all the normal things air

Condition and what are we cooling are we using a waterless coolant or or is it’s not water is it it’s coolant mix oh just a coolant mix it’s nothing exotic uh it depends on which cooling CT you’re talking about like the uh we actually use a chiller for the the cells

Themselves so we actually use ac refrigerant and Plum a little bit of that under certain conditions like track conditions where the energies go flying into the battery flying out of the battery that brings temperatures up so we take a little bit of the ac refrigerant and run it through there to

Keep it from getting too hot oh very cool and again just the way it’s all bolted together I find that really fascinating because if you do tweak it a lot of people do it’s not crazy A friend of mine has a for Cur GT and he bumped

The curb right he was like oh slend well that’s not too bad the dealer said well $18 $128,000 just what what I mean he and that’s not to fix it that’s just he was like oh my God it was like crazy and the fact that this can be repaired is I I

Like the fact that you just thinking ahead for idiots like me who might damage it you know well I hope not especially not today fans radios okay what else we got here so yeah there’s some pretty trick stuff on here um you see all the radiators out front you can

See a little teeny one that isn’t on the Z6 right in here that actually does that uh Front Drive Unit we actually take uh the condenser that’s for the air conditioning and we actually split it 2/3 1/3 and we just use the bottom to do some of the Power Electronics cooling

Now a car like this you come with a pro I think it’s probably a ctec battery charger correct is that who does it for corette I think they do I’m not sure oh to do a a trickle charger 12v B a car like this you always want to keep on a

Trickle Char if you’re going to store it for any length of time you want to keep the 12volt battery and that’s actually another thing I didn’t mention this car has a lithium ion 12vt battery too so in addition to the lithium ion propulsion battery the 12vt you the normal lead

Acid batteries that you think about that we use on the other Corvette models we actually went to lithium ion which some manufacturers offer that as an option to save a little bit of weight it’s tremendously expensive but it’s standard on this car it is and uh you know and

They last a long time they do last a long time and they can produce a lot of amps the engine cranks like this yeah my my McLaren is a 12 so that’s what 11 years old 12 years old still battery’s fine I I I I put a voltage it’s fine

Yeah it’s amazing so Lu I am is really the way to go yeah and that’s what the res is a lot of people have expressed concerns well how long is that battery going to last is going to last the life of the car it will we have 100,000 mile

Warranty on it eight years uh and what it’ll happen is it might get slightly less effective after that time but it’s not like it’s going to suddenly short out and die and you have to replace it right I mean you might lose 2% after five or six years something like that it

Trails off just like anything else like your phone anything that has batteries uh let’s move to the back here very now here’s a word I’m not familiar with pultruded is that how I say ped ped ped carbon now what does that mean I think I know it what’s that mean

So U this that part that we’re looking at here it’s a carbon fiber bumper beam so that protects the back of the car from low speed impacts that’s actually standard on all c88 generations cars right um it it’s the first curved pultruded bumper beam in the industry um

The reason why we’re using it uh you know we’ve used carbon fiber in various places uh around the car and it all depends on where you want to save the weight so um the reason why you see at the very back end of the car is that on

A mid-engine car the most important weight you can save is on the very back right you want too much weight in the back and so when you actually make this this is actually replacing an aluminum part so already light part but pultruded part uh car part even lighter and since

It takes weight off the back it lightens the weight load on the rear wheels it actually adds a little weight to the back and the reason why it’s called pull trude a lot of people are familiar with extruded extrusions like aluminum extrusions we use a lot of them on this

Car you push the metal through a die to create that shape in this case you actually use the the strength of the carbon fiber and you pull it through a die to create the shape that it is yeah if you want a good example I drive a car

From the ‘ 50s with a continental wheel kit on the back I hate those things you know because you go to the far end of the car then you bring it out even more and then you hang a tire on if you ever driven like a a 50s Packard or even a

Catal it’s you know the rear end you’re just swinging out that’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid right there yeah exactly okay and we other a lot of low density SMC what is that mean sheet molded compound so that’s one of the forms of uh composits that we use around

The car Corvettes since 19503 have been using fiberglass compar no sheet no sheet yes oh wow but now we have sheet molded yeah SMC and there’s various um configurations of it some are just glass based some are glass and carbon based you can see they’re black these are

Painted but if you look on a real car uh you’ll see that it looks like a black because you can actually see the carbon it’s extremely lightweight extremely strong it’s actually all bonded uh to the aluminum structure and you were talking about repairability that’s one

Way we can repair car if you get you know dinged on the corner back here this the metal won’t Bend this stuff will crush and that’s you can glue a new piece back on right okay and and the brakes like in most cars the steel brakes are standard then you pay extra

For the upgrade but these are the upgraded brakes right yes these are the biggest ceramic brakes we’ve ever done and they’re standard on this car ceramic brakes are typically a $81,000 option over a a performance Steel Brake right um and you might think well why did you why’ you go so far on

This camic brakes are great um for really everything unsprung mass is good they take the weight out of the whole car uh it’s very expensive way to take weight out of the car but the braking performance is really important especially on electrified vehicles and you see some of the very high-end EVS

That use ceramic brakes and there’s reasons for that first the very high and EVS are very high performance and so you need a lot of braking capability and one of the ways you get braking capability is brake Cooling and so the more the brakes can operate at high temperature

The less cooling you need and the reason that’s important on an EV is because brake cooling is drag you’re taking air that would normally flow over and past the car and you have to turn it and direct it towards brake parts and they bang it hits that brake parts and then

It diffuses and so you’re creating drag by doing that so if you can do less of that and have higher performance braks you’ll start to see that on a lot of EVs and that’s part of the reason we use it here the other thing I find fascinating

Because first thing A lot of people do with the Corvette they they buy the aftermarket exhaust system because it’s louder and but this is essentially these are straight pipes basically aren’t they yes well it’s a valved exhaust system so there’s legal requirements for sound and

So forth that we have to meet all around the world and so we have an active exhaust system have had for long time where we use electrically actuated valves that reroute exhaust uh in different paths so when you’re really on it um so you’re asking for maximum performance um those valves flip open

And then you bypass all the attenuation parts of the exhaust and you effectively have headers coming out of the engine and straight pipes out the back yeah that’s a good looking header actually on there it doesn’t look like a typical exhaust manifold no it doesn’t it almost

Looks like some M this is the one you want to buy this aftermarket you know well that’s just kind of fun there’s really nothing you can do to this to make it better faster leaner we put a lot of work into getting it uh where it is now there are laws and regulations

That we have to meet that some people in the aftermarket don’t so there’s a little bit of opportunity there but if you look all around the car you’ll see we’ve tried to maximize everything like one of the great things about a mid engine is that we can do uh effectively

Headers on the car when we had the engine in the front you had the rails the crash rails right next to it and so they had to do heavy cast iron pieces had to tuck down into the tunnel now we have the space to come straight out do a

Header through the Catalyst through the exhaust straight out the back and then you roasted your feet too and foot it was pretty warm yes now all that heat is behind you if you look at even the air filter right you only see half of it here but it’s a giant performance air

Filter so this engine breathes a lot as does the Z06 and so a lot of times people would put oh I just put in a low restriction air filter we already have this giant one that is really low restri you could take the thing out and it

Would hardly help it at all right right now I’m guessing we probably can’t drive this one no as much as fun as that would be well we Engineers have certainly talked about it and it has not happened yet but why don’t we take this for right absolutely let’s do It boy this is [Applause] great boy it feels like it’s Billet it’s solid it’s the same structure we designed the structure originally not just for convertible but also actually the Z6 is kind of the toughest case cuz it’s got the stiffest Springs so yeah this this car the chassis is tuned to be

A little bit between the stingray z51 and the the base Z06 so in the lineup of performance you got a Stingray stingray z51 and then this car and what’s the most expensive now is it the Z6 Z6 is the most expensive um you know that engine is uh you know it’s a race

Motor so it uses uh parts from corillo you know corillo out here right makes our uh our pistons and some other stuff too well that’s got to keep them pretty busy huh oh yeah yeah we’re building almost a, z6s a month now I know people are I’m constantly getting talked to

About oh I can’t get my Z6 why aren’t you building any well we’re building as many z6s as we’ve ever built before yeah and uh just can’t keep how many corbetts a year do you sell now um it depends on model year this this year this 2023

Model year it’s a longer model year CU it’s uh we’re changing over in the fall it will be we think the highest production highest volume Corvette model year ever 70 years 53,000 units W that’s great isn’t it yeah so that’s a long model year we could probably build 40 40

Something in a calendar year now what do you drive home every day this this the e e R and I just bought a stingray personally for my own use I know a guy I get you a deal do you I didn’t get a very good deal you can do better I

Know I remember David Brown had asked Martin and he sold it to his friend and his friend said no no I want it for your price and he charged him another $1,000 cuz he said he lost money on every car the guy was like no no we’re friends

I want to what you get of all right this is what I have to you insist it’s $1,000 more this my favorite story now you can hear the motor kick in yeah well it just feels planted I do like two wheel drive I like it’s stepping out a little bit you know

Y which this is overwhelmingly rear wheel drive right right almost 500 horsepower on the back axle 160 on the front and that was about the right proportion we thought given the weight distribution of the car cuz when you’re accelerating on you’re the car is haunching back you’re actually putting

More than 60% of the weight on the back you’re lifting the front so there’s only so much you can do as far as uh attractive but the fact that it’s the fastest accelerating Corvette even more so than the 06 which has more horsepower and lighter weight yeah is is it is it

Because it’s a it’s just a torque it’s a torque it’s a torque off the line if you wash the cars in a drag race this car just leaps out in front of the Z6 and the Z6 tries to reel it in doesn’t quite get there before the quarter but then

Shortly after that just blows by and on a track there’s no comparison you know a big speed track anyway then on a tight track a little a short track this car holds its own really really well CU it pulls it uses the front axle to pull you

Out of Corners uh it’s very very noticeable uh you can get on the gas sooner gas actually using the the battery to Plus in winter with snow I guess this is probably better as well with that you get yes um we don’t get stuck uh with this one and it comes St

Standard with all season tires oh okay like the Bas Stinger does even though they’re 345 white in the rear um I think those are the biggest allseason tires in the Auto industry yeah it’s funny it must be confusing a customer goes in and how you just how does he or she decide

Which which suits their needs do you have a specific type of customer for an eay that’s different than a yeah that’s an interesting question we’ve had this business challenge for a long time you know Corvette history we bring out kind of the base model and then each model up

We go higher in performance and people who want the best one are willing to spend more they want something more premium we forced them into Pure Performance meaning more track capability and so on the prior Generations cars people who wanted the best Corvette they’d end up driving a

ZR1 and they’re driving on racing slicks practically tires um and so we’ve always wanted we’re torn on how do we develop where we position this car we always want to keep it a little daily utility you got to be able to drive it to the tracks not but at the same time we’re

Competing with track monsters from other manufacturers and there’s a big trade-off there what this model lets us do is we’re going to keep this car the great allaround car and let the Z06 be that track scalp purpose built for the person who really is going to drive it

On the track and that’s the main thing they care about um so that’s why we call that that’s like a road scalpel this is a Swiss army knife does everything well you’re not going to get stuck I mean it’s an interesting change cuz in the old days look don’t confuse the issue

Just build a Corvette and people buy that you know the idea that you have so many variations of the same car that would not have been a good business model 30 or 40 years ago correct yeah and it you know if you look prospectively at it why would you do all

These variants right but you develop your way just like the 911 how many Varian does a 911 exactly and it’s because customers use the cars in a different way and they have individual tastes uh everybody wants something unique and but you can go too far cuz if

You do too much complexity then you can’t offer it at a good price you don’t get volume uh pricing on stuff so yeah we’ve been um we’re trying to get more customization and better targeting for like track versus non-track people and I think this car in

The Z06 even though they kind of look the same they share a lot of parts they’re tuned very differently and we’ve seen no uh drop off in uh co6 orders yeah’ introduced some people sit on their wallet and say h ibe that car would be better than me it’s it’s

Surprising the people who are passionate about getting a Z06 they’re still passionate cuz that you know it’s a unique car and this is electric power steering yes it is yeah y even that has gotten so good I remember when electric first came out it was like oh people

Didn’t really like it but now you can’t tell it’s better than hydraulic and there’s still people who do lousy electric power steering um but the best cars are doing it pretty decently now and the most horsepower you get from the front is at 168 you 160 160 160 so you

Can do 160 positive not quite that negative um and one of the challenges you have is you you know 160 negative horsepower dragging that front axle you think about what if you’re driving you know up in the mountains maybe hit a slick patch you can think about what’s happening when you’re dragging those

Front tires and all of a sudden you’re going around a corner and you hit a slippery patch you know what happens when they start to slide you lose your steering so we have actually very sophisticated means of telling the coefficient of friction between the tire and the road continuously so the the

Amount of power you get either positively or negatively is based on the amount of friction you have at the tire patch and I see you have an electric power switch so when I put my foot in it we’ll see okay I can go to the whole 160 here

You almost got there brief just that’s one thing about electric m is you can change the field strength in the electri motor so quickly it’s instant so it’s not like this engine that has this huge amount of inertia and it doesn’t change quite as quickly you know you have to

Wait for the air and fuel to it’s still pretty quick but compared to electric motor it’s there’s no comparison it’s fascinating because you know every every manufacturer has like Boutique Engineers a group of men and women that just work on this car and I imagine within Corvette now you have the E

Guys and that’s what they do and then you have the other Co is there is there one guy that kind of can do all of this or is that you I guess pretty much you’re well there’s there’s quite a few of us who worry about the whole car um

But yeah there’s um people migrate to Corvette once they get to Corvette they tend to stay there right right they they have a performance passion and so they they find Nirvana you know I mean you have tra in Corvette guys that go to dealerships you know uh we have service

Folks field service folks who go to dealerships uh when a time when we bring out a new model we do dealer training so we bring people like we bring uh sales people to Spring Mountain where we do our driver yeah I you know I I thought Poli

S behind me the end I went oh I heard the engines start to whine but yeah you asked about the the whole electrification was new to us and I was telling the story uh in the garage about you know how we going what’s the best way to do all-wheel drive is an

Electric or mechanical a lot of people hear something about the eay and they think oh somebody must have put a gun to their head and said oh you got to do some kind of electrification that’s what’s hot that’s what’s new actually we started this car before the whole move

To committing to 100% EV so this car was on the books actually before this predates M’s ultium uh system and so it was really in the infancy of getting EVS on the road uh when we started it so we went actually to the people who are doing the bolt and the volt

Batteries and we said you know we’ve got we’re doing a mid- engine car we got space we can do a battery we can do a front drive axle and so we want to use that to capture energy and give power and performance back to the car and so

We started talking to about it and everything we asked them was different than what the other cars needed like we didn’t really care about range it’s not about using it as an EV it’s not a plugin it’s all about quick transfer of energy in and out and you know within

Our lifetimes a battery the size of your cell phone will go in there one day you know what I mean I mean to replace it I don’t know in our lifetimes I’m not so sure well I mean Mclaren has a replacement battery for the P1 which is like

Maybe not a little more than half the size of the original battery with more power I mean it moves so so quickly yeah the you were asking about the heat exchangers the the cooling on this car is so complex with all the different heat exchangers they all have to coordinate

Based on how the car is being driven what kind of environment it’s in right right um but we did test this car on the track it’s pretty bulletproof like the Z6 and Stingray have been we in fact I was just at Spring Mountain a couple weeks ago uh driving ZO6 is out there

And it’s 110° just roasting hot and the best place to be was in the seat of the Corvette hammering on the track and the cold there is just blasting you it’s uh it’s pretty impressive and yeah I mean the first time I got in the C8 and went

Around the corner oh my God now I see what they’re talking about thank you yeah there was a lot of Skeptics early on but uh that kind of disappeared now not too many people skeptical about the choice anymore I think I told you before that even inside GM even as the car was

Being developed we were two years into it and we were still planning on building the old car the C7 at the same time they were just not sure that everybody was going to embrace this some people thought well sell the old car we probably sell more of these this will be

More of a niche product yeah that’s what I thought I thought that you know the C7 would be the 70 to $90,000 car and this would be 125 or 140 or something like uh I was stunned when it came out yeah $59.95 was the the open unbelievable

We’ve taken some price since then but still in the low 60s the basee coup and we do sell some of those people say oh you can’t get those I know people they ordered that’s what they ordered and that’s what they got I mean very comfortable but but just a great car

Amazing so is there still a hard toop or is everything removable now um so the standard condition of the car we’re driving here so it’s a removable roof that fits in the back and then the r-ray you can get all the other Suite of options that you can get on the other

Car so you can get the convertible which is extraordinarily popular the retracting hard top that goes down over the engine um actually more more than half of the z6s are being ordered that way so here’s this track car more than half of them are being ordered as the

Convertible and how much heavier is it 40 lb uh the convertible top is 60 lb worth wow I me so you skip a couple of Lunes and you get this same like you said we don’t have to add reinforcements under the body or anything to to do it

And I expect that’ll be true with this car too cuz this is as an allrounder the nice thing about that car is it’s a push of a button 16 seconds away from from open air you can do it a light you can do it while you’re driving plus it looks

Really cool super high-tech I think a an r-ray retractable hard cop is one of the most complicated machines you can buy as a consumer of any of anything really you think about the Machinery required for the top the whole mechanization of the the EV stuff it’s I asked the engineers to give

Me an exploded view of the whole car how many parts give me like an exploded view on it like that we put on a wall right uh I haven’t seen it yet but I it’s amazing complex this I mean no torque Ste nothing like that I mean that’s all it’s pretty funny

In Slippery conditions when you step on it and you have traction control interventions on the front axle I’ve never experienced that in a Corvette but you can actually feel it um it’s real smooth because with the electric motor you don’t have to cut spark and gas to

Manage that you can just change the field strength instantly and quell any slip on the front ax we’re talking about the the convertible one of the uh few complaints convertible that you can’t see that right so we’re fixing that for 24 oh you are yes we’re going to put a

Glass panel uh under the Tano so people want to go to show and show off their engine especially for Z Z6 people want to show off that motor um you can open the the Tano and there’ll be a glass window in there that you can see that oh

That’s great I got one of those people I thought I want to see I want see it’s there trust us and this hearkens back to that mid-60s it’s all that cockpit stuff we were talking about that for right-hand drive so most people who do right-and drive this comes straight across there’s

None of this it’s just flat so you can just take the wheel over and plug it in over here we actually have to tulle up all these parts that are AED towards you everything you see is is flipped over like I got my 63 split window there and

I the radio is upside down sideways oh that was so cool I mean the radio just turned sideways I don’t know why as a kid I thought that was oh just the greatest most exotic thing you could possibly imagine radios back then were literally boxes that you pluged and

Played you turn them in whatever angle you wanted so yeah you can still get I don’t know if this has the carbon roof on it we’re talking about use of carbon we kept the carbon roof uh for the car cuz that has you know it’s high in the car so it’s

Helpful for CG and also just wrestling this top off the carpent one weighs a lot less what do the roof weigh um 40 lb 16 lb 16 yeah we can take it off that’s it yeah 16 or 20 depends on which one we have a conventional one then we have the carbon one

Um I think it’s about 5 lbs difference it’s magnesium frame so what you see here see we don’t even cover this in trim that’s just painted magnesium get a flavor of it yeah just come try this this car broke all our passing records yeah when we do our

Testing and it’s not that much H you you think it’d be 9003 or something it pulls sell that torque it’s really sweet small block torque plus PP torque makes it’s a beautiful friend horsepower cells car torque wins races right wins Hearts too cuz you didn’t produce Peak

Horsepower during that run but right it was felt strong and you have launch control obviously with the got launch control we should do a slap watt so you can feel how it jumps off the line I don’t know if we can do that at a uh you

Know just from deadle you don’t you don’t have to do launch control no drag strip start or anything just take your foot off the brake and slap the throttle feel how it jumps off the line that’s what we’ll do up here at this light oh yeah that pulls nicely wow that’s

Amazing as much enjoy wheel spin and smoke it’s wasting time just get you there right now yeah you’ve seen some of the videos put out we can you can drift this car if you want yeah it’s uh it’ll do it well thanks for coming out to do this we

Really appreciate it and you know it does I I know it’s corny but it does make you feel proud that it’s American Technology it’s American workers it’s a union shop you know it’s really great it’s it’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it you know I mean it

It’s really everybody’s an engineer now that’s what I love you know everybody in in almost Automotive companies in America or Engineers I mean you got to marketing people obviously you have to have that kind of stuff but just the fact that everybody’s intimately involved with every aspect of the car it’s really

Exciting it’s such a high-tech product it’s arguably the most complicated consumer product in the market with all the regulations all around the world and all the things you’re dealing with just a piece of complicated Machinery all the safety stuff uh emissions you know everything is just so complicated so so

You really kind of have to be an engineer uh to understand it and we and our whole team uh in Michigan where we designed the car and where we build in Kentucky we’re so proud to be able to put together a car that’s competitive with anything anything from anywhere and

It’s such an aspirational vehicle you know it’s it’s a one thing people may dream of Ferraris and McLaren but that’s just dreaming this is a car you can actually attain it’s a car you can actually if you work hard right you know and you pay it’s certainly not

An inexpensive car but compared to the what everything else that has equal power and and and and speed cost it’s two to three times the cost of this car yeah and like you said it’s not just the cost to get in it it’s the cost to maintain it repair it if something

Happens you know you go to your local Chevy store if you need something it’s a a very different experience than the Exotics at least I dreamed of and you have one in your garage the kach you know people dream dreamed of as a kid that whole exotic you’d think of all the

Great things but you don’t think about any of the the rest of the experience that comes with that hilarious yeah should be very proud thanks for bringing this I appreciate it my friend thanks for time it’s it’s it anytime we can show off American expertise and

Technology to the rest of the world it it makes me feel proud it’s great this is a space race except it’s on the ground you know and and what you build in here are space shuttles well we think of them as um two passenger private jets

For the road that’s what it is Comfort everything that’s really what you know the first time I don’t know how many people watching said I get a chance to drive a C8 but the first time you do first time you turn that wheel you go oh that’s what everybody’s talking about

That that really defined what Mid Engine cars were like I think to most people somebody put the Corvette middle and what difference make I mean I thought my my C7 was the Pinnacle in handling it it it was fantastic yeah and then I got in

This one oh my God it just just turned a dime and the fact that with less horsepower the base the first base C8 Corvette was more powerful than the most powerful C7 I mean it was faster yeah I mean that’s that was that was an amazing

Fe that was all intentional um in our original presentations to Bob Lutz about why we should go Mid Engine had nothing to do with what people think of oh it’s exotic it’s cool it was all very quantitative things like you’re talking about steering response acceleration power to the ground

Acceleration out of a corner on a track it was all the things that pushed race cars into being mid at least in the upper class so whether you could get that without any downsides was a question but the other part of is you get that steering response that turn in

That you know Joy of driving and actually the car rides better than the the front engine cars which is something we were surprised at and because it did we’re able to use stiffer Springs still ride better even with stiffer Springs and that only enhances the handling and

It’s pultruded we got ped on here yeah gotr it’s fine with me