If you thought the mid-engine Corvette was the best Corvette story of the year, Genovation Extreme Electric might have you questioning that narrative. This Maryland-based startup has built an all-electric C7 Corvette thatās set to debut at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in just a few days, and itās a heck of a car, despite having to plug it in to charge.
Make no mistake, this is not a Tesla rolling around inside the body of a C7, this car still very much has the spirit of an American made muscle car/sports car. Being called the āGXEā, youāll be able to roll through 7-gears with the manual gearbox, and did we mention the transmission will be cycling 800-horsepower and 700 lbs-ft of torque to the wheels? Using this power, the electrified Corvette set a street legal electric car speed record of 209 miles per hour, putting it in supercar territory.
This isnāt the first try at the GXE, the first generation could race up to 130 miles per hour using a 44 kilowatt-hour battery, making only slightly less power than the current edition. The specialty auto builder managed to get it to the high-speed beast it is now by stuffing a new 60 kWh battery in it, while still maintaining a 50/50 weight distribution. In addition to reaching over 200 mph, itās also capable of jumping up to 60 mph in less than 3-seconds, making it swifter than the 3.5 second 0-60 mph the Grand Sport can do.
Now comes the uncomfortable part, the price tag. While you probably didnāt expect it to be cheap, the $750,000 cost makes it hard to love. Only 75 of these will be made and will require a $250,000 deposit to even reserve the space. Still, itās pretty cool to see an electric car with a manual transmission, even if itās not likely that itāll ever be practical enough to go into full-scale production.
Shawn Henry is a Texas native who has spent the majority of his career building and selling F-Bodies and Corvettes. Now studying journalism, he is taking a new direction with his love of GM Performance vehicles.
