The 2025 GMC Sierra EV Denali Is a $100,000 Super Truck
This is the new GMC Sierra EV Denali, and it’s a pretty impressive truck with a $100,000 sticker price, 750 fully electric horsepower, and a long list of impressive quirks and features. Today, I’m going to review the new Sierra EV Denali and show you everything. All right, time for the quirks and features of this Sierra EV. There are many, but one of the coolest is the folding midgate. Check this out. When you’re back here, you can put the seats down. First, fold the bottom part forward, and then you fold the back rest forward. And frankly, if you want, you can just leave it like this. You’ve actually created a lot of cargo space back here. If you want to put big items in back, but you don’t want to get your leather seats dirty. But if you want space for larger items, you can also fold down this piece here, which is directly connected to the bed of the truck. You can fold it down and then it’s open in back. And so if you have some long item like lumber that stretches all through the bed, you can stick it through the midgate and into the cabin. And you can fold it down on both sides. So, a large, wide, long item can fit through here. And it gets even better because you can remove the rear window. You can get that out of the way. And then something even bigger or bulkier or longer could come through from the bed into the cabin, vastly enlarging your hauling capabilities by enlarging your bed thanks to this folding midgate. Or if you don’t need it, just fold it all back up and you have a normal back seat. Or if you just want to put the seats down, open up the midgate so you can get a nice air flow through this interior, you can do that, too. You don’t have to fold it down just to haul. You can fold it down just cuz it’s cool. That’s an awesome feature. Not standard on every Sierra EV, but it’s on this Denali model. And next, there are many more quirks and features to cover, but first, let’s talk through some of the basics of this truck. Like I said, the Sierra EV is fully electric and it has an amazing 440 mi of electric driving range, which is an excellent figure. Makes this one of the longest electric driving range vehicles of any EV on the market today. Quite impressive. Also impressive is the performance. front and rear electric motors. So, it’s four-wheel drive and it has about 755 horsepower and 785 pound- feet of torque. Those are huge numbers. And this truck goes from 0 to 60 in the low 4 second range, which is an excellent figure for a vehicle that weighs, I think this is around 8,800 lb. Speaking of weight, this truck can also tow. General Motors says a towing capacity of around 10,000 lb, which is fairly impressive for an electric pickup truck. As for pricing, right now the only version that’s available is this one, the high-end Denali trim level and the edition one model, sort of a special early first edition that starts around $100,000. But GMC says more versions are coming and by next summer the lineup should fill out and include base models that start around $70,000 going all the way up to the high-end Denali like this. Now, it’s also worth pointing out the Sierra EV is one of the trio of electric General Motors pickup trucks that also includes the Chevy Silverado EV and the GMC Hummer EV, both of which I’ve reviewed. Now, since the Hummer EV is technically branded as a GMC, that means both this and the Hummer will be sold at the same dealerships, but they are very different vehicles. The Hummer has more power, more performance, and it’s just more over-the-top ridiculous with crazy styling and a removable convertible top. GMC tells me the big difference between the two, the Hummer is more of kind of a lifestyle cool off-roader thing, and this is more of a traditional real pickup truck. As for comparisons between the Sierra EV and the Silverado, interestingly, this is surprisingly different, especially on the outside. Interestingly, GMC tells me that the Sierra EV shares only its rear doors with the Silverado EV. Otherwise, significant exterior differences in terms of styling. But with the basics out of the way, let’s talk quirks and features. Starting up front where we have, well, not the engine. Instead, the front compartment is a giant front trunk power opener from the key fob, and it automatically rises up and reveals a large enclosed lockable storage area just like the trunk on a car, but now you have it in a pickup truck. So, in addition to the giant bed, you got more storage up here. You can see it’s pretty big. And it also includes a power outlet so you can power things from your pickup truck front. When you’re ready to close your front trunk, you just kind of start the process and then it takes over the rest of the way and closes automatically and gently, keeping your stuff nice and safe inside. Maybe more interesting is the bed and tailgate in the Sierra EV. Now, you can open it on the key fob by pressing this button twice. The tailgate will open up, but you can also walk up to the truck, and you can see there are two buttons to choose from back here. If you press the button on the right, it opens up the tailgate, but only halfway. So, if there’s some smaller item you want to leave kind of sticking out of the tailgate or just shove something in, that’s the button you would use. And then you can close it up pretty easily. But if you want full access to the whole truck bed area, you press the button on the left. You do that and the tailgate drops down, revealing access to the bed. But we’re not done with cool stuff from this tailgate yet. If you’re in this position and you have some longer item that you want to stick back here, you can open up this panel to create kind of a wall at the back of the tailgate to extend your bed. Now, also you have the midgate. So, not only is your bed larger by folding down the midgate sticking inside, but you can also extend your bed back here, which is pretty cool. And check this out. If you reach underneath the tailgate and press the button to open the upper half, you can drop it down and suddenly you’ve created a step where you can step right into your truck bed, which is otherwise pretty difficult to access. This truck’s high off the ground and so it’s not necessarily easy to get back here, but now with your step, you just climb right in, which is a pretty cool feature. And of course, when you’re done, you just fold it all up and you’re good. Now, beyond the cool tailgate this truck has, which is on other non-electric GMC’s, you go into the bed, and there’s a couple of interesting items here. One is this cover over the bed. Obviously, this is to keep stuff dry and safe, but it’s pretty easy to get rid of. You just pull on this little red loop and then you can fold it up as far as you need to in order to access whatever you have in the bed. Also worth pointing out back here on the right side of the bed, you have several panels that you can lift up revealing electrical outlets. You have your standard household outlets back here, quite a few of them. But you also have an outlet for 240 volt for a washing machine for instance. In case you want to take a washing machine out into a field and use your truck to power it, you can do that. But anyway, next let’s move on to the rest of the exterior quirks of the Sierra EV. Starting with the overall look of this truck. You can see it’s a nice looking truck, but it doesn’t really look like a regular GMC Sierra. It’s a lot more flowy and sort of modern and futuristic. They’ve done a good job of keeping it attractive and truck-like while still making it like cool and modern like an electric vehicle should. I think overall it’s a pretty nice design. Probably the most noticeable exterior item though is the wheels which are absolutely massive. 24in wheels on this Denali model. Obviously, the lower level trims won’t have those, but they are huge and they are very noticeably huge. And speaking of huge, this truck really is big. Around 233 in long, which makes it about a foot and a half longer than a Rivian R1T and about 3 feet longer than a Ford Explorer, which is already on sort of the larger side of a midsize SUV. It’s a big truck, but despite that size, it’s surprisingly maneuverable because it has four-wheel steering. You can see when the truck starts to turn in a tight space, the rear wheels turn opposite the front wheels to create a much smaller turning radius and make the truck more maneuverable and more usable in like city tighter environments. And yes, if you’re wondering, the truck has four-wheel steering. And so that means it can also crabwalk like the Hummer EV. That means at low speeds, all four wheels can go in the same direction and move the truck like sideways, sort of like how a crab walks. Take a look at some Sierra EV crab walking footage. [Music] And next we move inside the Sierra EV, which is a nice place to be because this particular Sierra EV is a Denali model, the top luxury GMC trim level, and it shows. This is a nice interior, high quality materials basically everywhere. Nice stitching on the seats with perforated leather. It looks good. the wood trim on the dashboard. Everything looks nice in this interior. Very high-end, almost on Rivian levels of luxury and quality and certainly better than the Silverado EV. Now, that makes sense because Denali is a big deal for GMC. They told me it’s around 34% of all GMC sales are a Denali model, the top luxury trim level. So, they want to make sure to get it right and to make it desirable like this vehicle is. GMC also told me the average transaction price for a Denali badged model is $79,000. So consumers really do see it as a luxury brand separate from GMC and they’re willing to pay for it. And in this truck’s case, you can see why. But anyway, on to the quirks and features of this interior. We start by opening the door. You look at the door sill. It says Denali and it shows some coordinates. Are those the coordinates to the factory where the truck is built perhaps or where it was designed? No. Would follow those coordinates and you’ll end up on the peak of Denali, the mountain peak in Alaska where this truck gets its name from. Kind of a little gimmick, but fun to see. Next up, you go inside and you can see here the center console, cup holders, a little storage tray, very high quality aluminum chrome trim and wood. But it’s hiding a secret. This is a little button. You push it and the cup holders fold back and you can push the front storage tray forward to reveal a large storage compartment underneath the center console that you probably would never even know is there, but it is. And it has some extra charge ports and of course some extra storage where you can put stuff that you want to keep hidden. And speaking of hiding things, here’s a cool Sierra EV quirk. It has hidden climate control vents. If you look on the dashboard, you can see all the normal vents. Two on the driver’s side, two on the passenger side. But the driver actually has extra lower climate control vents down here for a lower body, like your legs or your hips or whatever, and then upper climate control vents as well. So, the driver has four individual climate vents, which is a pretty nice touch. You wouldn’t notice those at first glance, but they’re there. Now, one thing this truck does not have is an engine start stop button. Obviously, it has no engine, but a lot of EVs, you climb inside, you press a button to turn them on. This one, not. So, you get inside, you push the brake, and as long as you have the key in your pocket, it recognizes that you’re ready to go, and it wakes up, turns on, and you can shift into gear and drive off without ever pressing a start stop button. And indeed, technology is a big story in the Sierra EV. There’s a lot of screens in here. And let’s start with the rear view mirror, which at first glance looks like a regular rear view mirror, but you flip this switch. And it becomes a screen, a camera projecting what’s going on behind you, which is a cool feature because if the rear seats are full of people or stuff, and you can’t see out the back window, you still have a clear view in your mirror thanks to that camera. But undoubtedly the most important screen in this truck is the giant vertically oriented center infotainment screen right here in the middle, which I happen to think is absolutely fantastic. It’s huge. It’s easy to figure out, very simple, very responsive, well positioned. It’s just great. Now, General Motors no longer off Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, so you don’t get that stuff. But integrated into this infotainment system is Google Maps and Google Assistant, which frankly gives you a lot of the nice features you’d want from CarPlay right back in the form of good navigation and Google Assistant to help you with all sorts of stuff. The screen also has a lot of other great benefits like a fantastic home screen that shows quite large. basically everything you want to see. Map, music, your climate controls, it’s all right there in this large screen. And again, very easy to use, very sensitive to your touch, very intuitive and simple to figure out. Now, this infotainment system does integrate a lot of vehicle controls, some which might be controversial, like your headlights, but it’s worth pointing out the headlight control is always here, right in this spot, fixed in position, so it’s easy to see. And while your climate controls are integrated into the giant screen, controlling them actually involves physical switches at the very bottom. So you get the best of all worlds. One simple screen for everything, but actual switches to change the climate control fan speed or adjust the temperature, which is pretty nice. And another benefit of this infotainment system screen is the camera system, which in a lot of General Motors vehicles is excellent. And that is certainly true here. You can see a lot of different angles, high quality, highresolution cameras from this truck, very good, very nice to see. And again, helps with the maneuverability. Big truck, but you can basically see every inch of it with those cameras. In this infotainment system, you will also find your max power mode. You go into your drive modes. You can see there’s several options, but also an icon down here. If you press it, this happens. So, it makes a little noise and does a little animation. And it also puts you in max power mode so you can have your ultimate acceleration, unlock all the power in case you want to drag race in your 8,800 lb pickup truck. It’s worth pointing out that the infotainment system is also where you will find the crabwalk mode, but getting to it is a little complicated. You have to go into controls and then there’s a rear wheel steering icon and a crabwalk icon. You tap on crabwalk and then confirm that’s what you want to do and you can crab walk around and freak out bystanders if you want. Now the other important screen in this vehicle is the gauge cluster screen directly behind the steering wheel. And I got to say it is fantastic. General Motors has been refining and improving their gauge cluster screens over the years and this one is great. The default screen shows you everything you want to see, but you could also change it to show you a full screen map in case you want to have your navigation directions right in front of you in your line of sight. Very easy, very configurable. And in this truck, you also have a heads-up display projected onto the windshield right ahead of you. So, there’s even more vehicle information all directly where you’re looking, so you don’t have to take your eyes too far off the road. And speaking of that, this particular Sierra EV Denali also includes Super Cruise, which is General Motors, I guess you call it a driver assist technology, but it really is as close to self-driving as any system is. You activate it with this little steering wheel icon on the steering wheel and then the upper part of the wheel turns green lets you know that basically the car has taken over. And as long as you’re driving on a mapped road that they have mapped and taught to the system, which is most highways in the United States, then the vehicle really will drive for you. And it’ll even make lane changes. You put on your turn signal, it finds a hole, moves over all for you without you doing anything. The only caveat is you have to keep your eyes forward. There’s a camera mounted right here on the steering column that is monitoring your eyes to make sure you’re looking at what’s going on on the road in case you have to take over. But generally speaking, especially on the freeway, it’ll steer around freeway curves, slow down, speed up with traffic, change lanes. It’s an excellent system, and you can be handsoff virtually all of the time. I’ve sat here for 30, 40 minutes, basically completely hands off using Super Cruise. It works wonderfully. And finally, we move on to the back seat in this Sierra EV, which frankly is huge. There is a ton of space back here for knees, heads, hips, legs, whatever you want. And because this is a dual motor, there’s no drive shaft down the center. So even the middle passenger in back has a massive amount of room with no big hump that takes up space for their feet. You really have a huge rear seat area back here. And some nice amenities. You can see two USBC ports for device charging and even a household power port behind this panel. So you can plug in a blender if you want or a toaster in the back of your truck. You also have heated rear seats back here. You can tap these buttons and turn them on, which is a nice luxury. And speaking of luxury, you have the same high quality trim and materials on the seats you had up front. So, contrast stitching, perforated leather. It all looks and feels very nice back here. And in case you were curious, yes, you get a lot of cup holders in back. Two on the back of the front center console. You get a few little cup holders partitioned out in your door panel on either side. And if you fold down the center part of the back rest, you can see even more cup holders for all of your rear passenger drinking needs. Sitting back here also lets you experience the giant glass roof that this truck has. It doesn’t open, but it’s huge, and it really gives you access to see the world, the sky, the trees above you, and it diminishes any claustrophobia you might feel inside a vehicle. It feels very open and airy back here. All right, driving the Sierra EV, the fully electric GMC Sierra. So, the electric pickup market is hot apparently. We got the Hummer EV, we got the Silverado and the Sierra. Of course, there’s Rivian, Lightning, and obviously the Cybert truck. This the Sierra EV is certainly the one that’s been talked about the least, I would say. I’ve heard kind of some some hum and some buzz around basically all the other ones, but not this one. And yet, at least from the from the perspective of the GM trucks, the Silverado, the Sierra, and the Hummer, this is probably the most appealing. This is more like a truck. And it more closely mirrors like a regular GMC Sierra Denali or a heavyduty Sierra Denali um in basically every way. The big exception, of course, is that it has 750 horsepower. And so, you step on it and it rockets. I love how this thing accelerates. I think it’s fantastic. Very, very quick and especially impressive considering the massive size of it. This is a lot bigger than a Rivian. This is a big full-size pickup truck with a full-size interior and a big bed and back and yet it is still quite fast uh and quite impressive. Super Cruise is really excellent. It really does do a great job of driving on your behalf. I drove this in heavy traffic yesterday for about an hour and I didn’t really touch the steering wheel during any of that time. Super Cruise during that time only turned off once. It only got confused one time. Um, and other than that, it kind of did everything including lane changes. It was quite impressive. One thing I don’t love about the truck, despite the Denali trim level, despite the, you know, the fact that it’s kind of an EV, it’s a basically a groundup new truck compared to a regular Sierra, it still does have pickup truck style road manners. I in my opinion it definitely drives a little bit rougher than a Rivian. Um it feels more like an F-150 Lightning or a pickup truck in that sense. Now of course it is a pickup truck, but if you were hoping to buy this as sort of like a lifestyle vehicle, like an SUV replacement kind of thing, you’ll probably find that it rides a little rougher than you than you might want it to. But with that said, otherwise this is a pretty nice place to spend time. A nice interior with a lot of interior space with great technology with a lot of easy intuitive highquality controls. It’s a nice place to be, especially at the price point. Around $100,000 is big money, but in today’s world, there’s a lot of vehicles, I mean, that’s starting to become kind of a norm price point for a nice full-size SUV or pickup truck, and that’s what this is. And it really fits in there. Plus, it offers an immense driving range, excellent uh Super Cruise driver assist technology, and excellent performance. It really combines like a lot of great things um in terms of luxury, interior space, driving capabilities. is there there’s really a lot of nice benefits. Drawbacks I think are price point is high. Um production volume is very low. They’re really only trickling them out. And like I said, road manners a little bit, but I would say there’s a lot of a lot of really good things here. Now, is this better than a Rivian? I think that’s what a lot of people are going to be asking. Tough to say. To me, the Rivian feels like a slightly more premium experience. Certainly, that’s how people will feel about it, even if this truck is about on par in terms of interior and tech and all that. And so the Rivian has this kind of perception of being nicer. Obviously, Rivian versions offer more power and better performance. Um, but I think it actually is surprisingly on par in a way that I wasn’t expecting. One thing I will say, the Rivian is a little bit more user friendly in terms of sizing from like a city usability perspective. This is definitely more of a truck sizing to appeal to truck people. I’m not sure that was the right decision by General Motors. I see a lot of Rivians being driven by people who probably wouldn’t otherwise have a truck. But GM really wanted this to be like a truck truck, just happen to be an EV, and they’ve really succeeded at that. It feels like it can do a lot of truck things. It has a lot of nice truck benefits. I ran over the bed, the towing capacity. It’s all pretty impressive. The midgate is cool. There really are some nice like truck features in this truck, uh, plus some nice car features, some nice EV features. It’s really a great combination of stuff, and I think it’s easily among my very favorite EVs. Um, it’s a it’s just a kind of a nice overall all-around vehicle. If the Hummer EV is too expensive, too over the top, too ridiculous, totally get it. If you need more capability and capacity than a Rivian, more size, get it. Uh, this truck offers that. But you are paying a little bit of a penalty in terms of overall vehicle size and kind of truckish road manners. And so that’s the new GMC Sierra EV Denali. This truck is expensive, but it’s also the best version so far that I’ve driven of the Hummer EV, Silverado EV, Sierra EV trio. It’s a better value than the Silverado EV and more reasonable than the Hummer EV. And frankly, it’s a pretty impressive truck and electric vehicle overall. And now it’s time to give the Sierra EV Denali a Doug score. And the Doug score is here. 65 out of 100, which puts the Sierra EV Denali here against other EV trucks. Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of the Sierra EV Denali. It’s sort of a weird vehicles. It has some really great qualities, like nice technology, an amazing driving range, a surprisingly nice interior, an excellent performance. Stuff you’d associate with a luxury performance car, but it’s a pickup truck, but it’s priced like a luxury performance car. This is actually a shockingly competent vehicle, but I don’t see a huge market for it. I suspect truck buyers don’t prioritize the best stuff about this truck, and luxury performance car buyers aren’t really interested in a pickup, and very few people are willing to pay up for the small vin diagram overlap between those two groups.
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This is the new 2025 GMC Sierra EV Denali and it’s a pretty impressive truck. The Sierra EV has massive power, size, and electric range. Today I’m reviewing this GMC Sierra EV and I’ll show you the many quirks and features. I’m also going to get behind the wheel and show you what it’s like to drive.
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DOUGSCORE CHART:
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 THIS…
00:29 CARS & BIDS!!!
01:06 Folding Midgate
02:38 The Basics
04:04 GM Trio of EV Trucks
05:06 Front Trunk
05:54 Trick Tailgate
07:28 The Bed
08:15 Exterior Styling
09:00 It’s Huge
09:40 Crab Walk!
10:15 Interior Quality
11:18 Interior Quirks & Features
13:36 Giant Infotainment Screen
16:23 Gauge Cluster Screen
16:59 Super Cruise
18:09 Rear Seating
19:48 Driving Experience
24:10 Final Thoughts
24:40 DougScore
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