2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray Review: Absurd Value, Absurdly Cool

Even before you set off—hell, even before you get in it—the 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray feels special. This generation of Corvette has garnered its fair share of aesthetic detractors and, in pictures especially, some proportions do feel iffy. But you can’t deny that in person, it’s got presence.

This decidedly exotic, European-adjacent aura was already apparent in the regular Stingray but it’s even stronger with the E-Ray because there’s quite a lot going on underneath the skin. The Stingray’s 6.2-liter V8 meets an electric front axle, resulting in not just the first hybrid Corvette but the first-ever all-wheel-drive ‘Vette and, as of this moment, the quickest-accelerating version of America’s sports car Chevy has built so far (currently, GM has not disclosed this stat for the upcoming ZR1).

Yes, folks: tech reserved for seven-figure, unobtanium hypercars just 10 years ago can now be had starting at $106,595. And it isn’t an LT2-duct-taped-to-a-Volt-motor slapdash job either. There’s proper engineering going on, and the Corvette team deserves its flowers for packaging the E-Ray’s hybrid system in a way that doesn’t hinder passenger or cargo room.

Tight Packaging

Let’s talk styling for a sec. What is essentially the Z06 body brings a more aggressive front-lower fascia. Body-colored trim including the side wishbone thing visually set it apart from other variants of Corvette. Swoopy-yet-chiseled surfaces and cab-forward, mid-engined proportions make it look properly exotic and properly supercar.

Reach for the door and you almost expect ’em to open upwards. They don’t though, but that’s OK because the inside of the Corvette is plenty exotic. Potential unpopular opinion: I love the square steering wheel. It looks and feels immensely cool, making the car feel like a LaFerrari or something, and to me, it doesn’t hinder its functionality as a steering device one bit. Also, heated carbon fiber is and will always be a luxuriously neat automotive touchpoint, that’s just a fact.

The rest of the cabin feels properly cool, too. Even compared to other cars of this ilk, the inside of the Corvette is a—cramped isn’t the right word—fitted space. As a five-eight Asian man with a non-egregious BMI, precariously slipping in and feeling like I’m wearing the car rather than sitting in it is a seriously cool sensation, but I can’t imagine the Big Corvette Boys being very comfortable in there for very long.

There’s a mile-long list of performance car cabins that claim to get inspiration from fighter jets, but the C8’s cockpit arguably leans into this motif the hardest. The dash wraps around you, and the screens—with their very Lockheed Martin-esque font—are angled to seemingly only serve the driver. The gear select toggles, the ultra-weighty drive mode selector, the carbon shift paddles, and the concept car dash design are all tailored to make you feel like you’re flying a plane that may or may not have guns on it. The long line of physical climate buttons, meanwhile, is a comically minimalist yet surprisingly functional solution that still beats relegating that stuff to a touchscreen.

This being a supercar by GM, though, there are some quirks. The seat doesn’t go down quite far enough, surprisingly. The screens’ colors look noticeably washed out. Some interior touches such as the little plastic nubs you use to adjust vents feel like they could’ve come off a Chevy Sonic. And even after living with the E-Ray for a weekend and flipping through the relevant sections in the owners’ manual, I still have no idea how to lock the doors from the outside without using the key fob, adjust the brightness of the screens, or make sense of the seat memory buttons and settings.

Get this Coupe and the hand-removable targa top is easy enough to take off and store in the rear trunk (there’s a front trunk, too). But open-top driving at anything above around 50 mph results in an excessive amount of buffeting, and I don’t recommend it.

Electrified Exotica

All of that is forgiven, however, when you spool up the E-Ray’s party piece: the V8 hybrid powertrain. By now, you probably already know all the specs and facts. But as a refresher, a mid-mounted 6.2-liter LT2 V8 shared with the base Stingray makes 495 horsepower by itself and powers the rear axle. Powering the front axle, however, is a 160-hp hybrid electric motor hooked up to a 1.9-kWh lithium-ion battery hiding between the seats. Total system output clocks in at 655 hp and 585 lb-ft of torque, rocketing the E-Ray from zero to 60 mph in a quickest-Corvette-ever 2.5 seconds and onto a top speed of 183 mph.

Even just pulling out of the parking lot, though, the Corvette E-Ray feels exotic. Light, tight, direct steering and that wraparound cabin immediately make you feel like you’re piloting a big go-kart and wearing the V8 like a backpack. Shift the hefty, knurled drive mode knob into Sport mode, point the E-Ray at an empty on-ramp, give it the big beans, and the car rockets forward with a frightening yet smooth amount of thrust. The steering continues to feel precise and pleasantly physical—E-Ray’s nose darts in and the car goes where you point it with a satisfying eagerness that you feel wouldn’t be present if it were front-engined.

There is an electronic whirr coming from the hybrid system if you listen for it, but where, say, the McLaren Artura wears its electrification on its sleeves, the E-Ray’s is more subtle. The hybrid Corvette’s hybridity is merely a supporting background act for the big V8, not the other way around. Even so, though, I wish the V8 sounded meatier for more of the time—it’s sonorously great when your foot is pinned to the floor and the tach needle is charging toward red but a tad underwhelming everywhere else.

The brakes—eBoost-assisted carbon ceramics with Brembo four-piston monobloc calipers—are strong but a bit touchy. They take getting used to using smoothly on the street and don’t exhibit that satisfyingly short, solid feeling you get in, say, its Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing sedan stablemate. Similarly, the Tremec eight-speed dual-clutch transmission shifts pretty quickly but lacks the malleable, immediate snappiness of, say, Porsche‘s PDK or even the best applications of ZF’s eight-speed.

Going over some of the E-Ray’s features on paper, you might think it’s quite livable, but that wasn’t really my experience. It may have Magnetic Selective Ride Control 4.0, but even in Tour mode, the ride is rough. It may have a silent, electric-only Stealth Mode, but that only works for “three to four miles” at speeds of up to 45 mph. And, yes, it may have an optional front lift system to help it negotiate steep driveways, but, uh, Chevy didn’t tick that option when it spec’d this one out. Make no mistake, this is a capital-S supercar made to decimate racetracks and challenge stopwatches, not navigate city centers or cross countries.

It’s a Hybrid So I Guess We Should Discuss Fuel Economy

The E-Ray’s hybrid-ness exists mostly in the name of performance, and nowhere is that more apparent than when you realize it’s actually slightly less efficient than the unelectrified Stingray that shares the same engine. Per the EPA, it’s rated for 16 mpg in city, 24 on the highway, and 19 combined—the base Stingray matches these city and combined figures but ekes out 25 mpg highway. Over about 270 miles of mixed driving, I averaged 17 mpg in the E-Ray. Here’s how its official figures compare against other mid-engined hybrid cars of this style.

Verve and Value

The 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray feels about as special as a drive as it does as an item. Yeah, there are some GM parts bin elements that I wish were nicer. And maybe I’d be singing a different tune if I drove it on the track, but on the street at least, it isn’t the dynamically perfect, set-your-nerves-on-fire driver’s car that I perhaps hoped it would be. The brake pedal could feel better and its hybrid powertrain—as capable as it is—could be rowdier in sound and personality. But the sheer amount of performance, engineering, visual theater, and downright cool you get for the money here is absurd.

That’s always been the Corvette’s schtick, though. In electrifying America’s Sports Car, Chevy has chosen to not radically change the Corvette formula but merely enhance it. And on paper, those enhancements are significant.

The Corvette E-Ray is a deeply impressive technical accomplishment. Is there room for improvement here? Sure. But it corners like a proper supercar, thrusts like a jet, and looks like it could cost a million bucks. (Just a few short years ago, it would have.) And for just a skosh over a hundred grand, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to ask it to do any more than that.

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