The 2025 Chevy Blazer EV SS Is A Performance Crossover For Normies
It's not an enthusiast special like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, and that's ok. I just wish it wasn't so fat.
The 2025 Chevy Blazer EV SS isn’t the drifty, playful performance EV of our dreams. Chevy made that clear before I even got in the driver’s seat.
“One more spoiler for you: I will tell you, if you decide to explore the outer limits of the vehicle on the track today, no surprise, you will experience a bit of understeer in the vehicle,” Blazer EV Product Marketing Manager Chris Boman said during the introduction presentation. “That’s a characteristic of the vehicle. It’s the safe way to tune the vehicle for normal customers that we’re going to be selling this vehicle to.”
Understeer—the tendency of a vehicle to push wide when you go too fast in a corner—is the opposite of oversteer, the drifty sliding action that looks feels incredible but carries a high risk of spinning. It’s the kind of thing that looks great in a commercial for a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, with its drift mode. But this isn’t that car, and that’s ok.
It’s a performance electric SUV designed for the people who buy them. That means it’s not the most exciting car in its class, but it’ll probably dust the Hyundai on the sales charts.
Gallery: 2025 Chevy Blazer EV SS: First Drive
(Full Disclosure: Chevy flew me to Charlotte, North Carolina to drive the Blazer EV SS. The company paid for my travel and lodging, and provided access to a closed course at Ten Tenths Motor Club.)
What Is It?
The Blazer EV SS is the long-delayed performance variant of Chevy’s midsize electric crossover. It uses the same 102-kWh battery pack as the existing Blazer EV RS, good for 303 miles of range here. But the SS gets way more power, with two permanent magnet motors putting out up to 616 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque. Unlike the Hyundai, where full power is available only in 10-second bursts, the SS will deliver that full dollop as long as you are in “Wide Open Watts” (WOW) mode.
2025 Chevy Blazer EV
Chevy claims a 0-60 time of 3.4 seconds. That’s a tenth behind the Hyundai but a tick ahead of the Tesla Model Y Performance. Pricing also splits the difference. A Model Y is in the mid $50,000 range, an Ioniq 5 N is $67,675 and the Blazer EV SS goes for $62,095 with destination included. The only major option box is the $395 Performance Package, which adds summer tires and brakes with a different coating for better high-stress performance. The price is bang on with the Kia EV6 GT, probably the closest competitor in terms of overall feel and purpose.
Where the Blazer separates itself from the other fast electric SUVs is in sizing. This is a big car. It measures about five inches longer than a Model Y, nine inches longer than the Ioniq 5 and 8 inches longer than the Kia. This doesn’t offer a huge payoff in cargo space—the Model Y is the packaging champ of this class—but the Blazer EV’s rear seat is giant, and the wide cabin makes it feel like a big, American SUV in the best way.
Is It Fun?
God, who’s asking? This is where reviewing electric SUVs gets tricky. As an enthusiast, fun to me means engaging to drive, rewarding to wring out and communicative. The only electric SUV I’ve driven that ticks those boxes is the Ioniq 5 N. Not even the Porsche Macan Turbo Electric made my hair stand up. But I also hear constantly from readers telling me the smooth power of their bog-standard electric crossovers makes them more fun than any gas car.
For that crowd, the Blazer EV delivers. Its 650 lb-ft of torque kicks you right in the ass, delivering a stomach-churning off-the-line launch. But it’s the only trick in this performance SUV’s wheelhouse. . Ok, it also bites in the corners and delivers some surprising agility given its—wait for it—5,730-pound (!!) curb weight. But here’s the thing. Anything so ridiculously heavy is not going to be something you want to push hard, and the Blazer SS is no exception. The awkward combination of dazzling speed and complete numbness, with no steering feel or audio cues to inform you of what’s going on underneath you, there’s really no joy in pushing the limit.
More Fast Electric Crossover Options
That’s ok. I don’t think the average electric SUV driver will be doing track days. But Tesla manages to deliver similar performance and range with more cargo space in a package that is over 1,000 lbs lighter. The Ioniq 5 N, which I drove at Laguna Seca, is 900 pounds lighter. Its range is a comparably paltry 221 miles, but I think Blazer’s absurd weight is a bit damning here if you’re a driving enthusiast.
As the heaviest car in its segment by quite a bit, the Blazer EV can only be so fun. It’ll kick your butt off the line, but find a bend and you’ll have to manage a full-size truck’s worth of weight.
Is It Good?
The better news is that the Blazer EV is much more biased toward daily driving than many other performance EVs. It’s a big, cushy crossover with a notably smoother ride and far more road-trip endurance than the Ioniq 5 N. It’s also a better tripper than the EV6 GT or Ford Mustang Mach-E GT.
Chevy decided to give the performance version a bigger battery than my personal Blazer EV, the LT, meaning you don’t lose range by going up to the fast one. The RS rear-wheel-drive is still the range king—up to 334 miles—but I think Chevy is smart to make sure the pricy one gives you over 300 miles of range.
The SS also gets Super Cruise standard. The technology allows you to go hands-off on the highway, and it’s simply my favorite driver assistance system on the market. It’s confident and feels safe, with a driver monitoring system that makes sure your eyes never leave the road. The fixed suspension doesn’t feel noticeably stiffer than my base-model 2024 Blazer; that along with more rangehas me thinking the SS is actually a better road trip car. That’s a good thing: People don’t want to spend $62,000 on something that sucks to drive for more than a few hours.
Like lesser Blazers, the SS does better with big bumps than small undulations. Dips and long-radius bumps in the road can overwhelm its suspension, reminding you of just how heavy this car is. Pretty much every electric SUV I drive has a similar problem, with an annoying among of head-tossing motions over tricky surfaces. The Blazer isn’t the worst offender, but it’s much better on high-speed roads than it is on broken pavement in the city.
The Blazer EV SS weighs over 5,700 lbs. That's about as much as a fully loaded, crew cab Chevy Silverado 4x4.
I also saw between 2.8 and 2.9 miles per kWh during mostly country road driving, giving it around 290 miles of real-world range in those conditions. But I didn’t have time to do a full range test or charge test. Chevy says it’ll charge at 190 kWs—same as the RS—and add just under 80 miles of range in 10 minutes on a charger.
Its infotainment suite is pretty top-flight, assuming you can live with General Motors’ decision to ditch CarPlay in most of its EVs. You still get access to Google Maps, Spotify, YouTube Music and other apps through the car’s built-in Play Store. You can even stream movies and shows when charging, thanks to available apps like Prime Video and Max. That functionality should roll out to other GM EVs, too.
The Blazer EV SS and other GM EVs are getting streaming video access, which should make charging stops a bit more tolerable.
All of this makes it a reasonably solid medium-sized electric SUV, irrespective of performance. It has the same issues as other Blazers—no frunk, very heavy, no CarPlay—but makes very few tradeoffs compared to them.
Is This The One To Buy?
Throughout the two-day event, I got one question about four times from Chevy representatives who knew I lease a Blazer EV: “Are you going to trade yours in for this?”
Of course not. My main qualms with the Blazer EV are that it’s too heavy, too expensive and too much for most of my needs. That there are buyers of 5,000-lb family SUVs who think 0-60 in 6 seconds is “too slow” is wild to me. I cannot deny, however, that they exist. I have already seen people in the Blazer EV subreddit posting about how they traded their RS models for SS versions.
The good news is that they will experience few, if any, tradeoffs. The Blazer EV SS rides well, is just as practical and goes further than the LT. It’s more all-weather-capable than the RWD RS thanks to its standard all-wheel drive, and it comes with every option you’d want.
It is not more fun than the Ioniq 5 N, nor as mature as a Tesla Model Y in terms of technology and ownership. Yet the outgoing Model Y Performance is far less comfortable and offers a love-it-or-hate-it ultramodern interior. The Hyundai is smaller, extremely stiff, offers nowhere near as much range and costs more. So the Blazer EV SS may not be track-capable or hair-rising fun. In this segment, it doesn’t have to be.
Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com.
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