Congrats, you survived the holidays. And if you’re lucky, with mere flesh wounds. Don’t worry, there’s always a chance for pumpkin-spice dismemberment over next year’s roast. At least that’s how the cliche goes.
But in these times of intense political feeling, a Tiny Tim miracle occurred in our house. Somehow the extended family swore off politics at the dinner table, sick of the turmoil that stains our lives, fueled as it is by the always-burning news cycle and a group of feckless sycophants—filling both sides of the aisle—who confuse civic duty for bloodsport.
I digress.
Welcome to Kinardi Line, mouthpiece of the free world’s most curious auto writer. Home to questionable takes, quiet revelations, and shitbox worship.
Photo by: Chevrolet
Everyone was on their best behavior this year, even with political flashpoints shimmering below the surface.
Like it or not, EVs have become one of those flashpoints. The mere existence of battery cars stokes fervor or hatred, often depending on how you vote. These vehicles’ development is spurred by government legislation, and their sales are prodded by subsidy. Again, this elicits to praise or scorn.
And with the highly visible head of our largest EV automaker playing an increasingly… uh… curious role in the national political conversation, we can’t separate this conveyance from conflict.
Photo by: Chevrolet
So when I pulled into the driveway of the family home at the helm of the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado EV, I felt a sense of trembling trepidation. Would this truck somehow light the fuse?
After pleasantries were dispensed, the first cold lagers cracked, fresh and foamy, I was shocked to hear a shout from across the yard.
“Hey what’s the deal with that truck?” shouted my wife’s cousin.
He’s a wheat farmer and from a multi-generational line of wheat farmers. For 2024 you could probably guess which way his vote swung. It wasn’t always thus.
Photo by: Chevrolet
Through most of the 20th century, The Blue Team better communicated with working Washingtonians—and laid the subsidies on especially thick—winning the rural vote here.
The Big R has been less gracious with farming subsidies, historically, but most of the farmers in my extended family identify with the party on ideological terms. One thing hasn’t changed with the times, however: pickup trucks are essential to farmers’ lives.
So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised at how easily this EV pickup Trojan Horsed its way into the family circle. Its styling isn’t to my taste—too angular, too eager to broadcast its differences to body-on-frame trucks than to draw comparisons—but everyone else keyed into the Silverado EV’s Avalanche-inspired looks with enthusiasm, prodding and poking the truck with one hand, beer in the other.
Photo by: Chevrolet
Overall, the RST’s exterior was a big hit. So was its interior.
This truck isn’t explicitly a work rig like its ICE counterparts, indulging in softer interior materials than those workmanlike surfaces adorning the F-150s, Silverados, and GMC 1500s that filled the rest of the driveway.
And as fancy as modern trucks have become, the RST goes beyond, hosting every creature comfort you could imagine. It even nails another benefit of having a truck this size, despite a floor lined with batteries: space.
One of the major draws when moving from a mid-size to a full-size truck is the amount of interior volume gained. You don’t hear it talked about much, but the reason American families gravitate toward Silverados is that midsize trucks are only serviceable family rigs. Not great ones.
Photo by: Chevrolet
Sure you can stuff a pair of car seats in the back of your Tacoma, Colorado, Ranger, etc., and still have a somewhat functional bed, but for the slight penalty you face in efficiency and up-front cost, the full-size truck offers vastly better riding arrangements and capabilities overall.
The Silverado EV mirrors that trend. While most EVs I’ve driven—and almost every hybrid—concede passenger and trunk space to batteries, the RST offers a cavernous hold, same as any other full-size truck.
In short, the RST doesn’t sacrifice much in the way of being a truck to be an EV. That’s a huge sticking point for most Americans.
Photo by: Chevrolet
Then there’s this truck’s party piece, called the “midgate,” a convertible cutout at the rear end of the cab so you can (presumably) accommodate lumber that otherwise wouldn’t fit in the bed with the tailgate up. The process to remove the midgate is finicky and laborious, but dammit it’s novel and imaginative.
This feature—or at least the idea of this feature—will sell a few trucks to weekend warriors into specific hobbies like woodworking or kayaking who value a specific type of hauling versatility.
It was a holiday hit, too. I didn’t want to fuss with the process of removing, admiring, and then reinstalling the midgate components. Especially after a few cold ones. But the gathered familial masses demanded it.
Photo by: Chevrolet
And the next day, well after the beers had been slept off, I took a few relatives for a drive to show off the RST’s comfort, quietude, and outright speed.
Shouts filled the cabin when I slammed the right pedal and the RST reared back with its immense curb weight and rocketed toward the Olympic Mountains. Super Cruise worked absolutely flawlessly on the drive home, capping a roughly 200-mile journey. Everyone left on great terms—not a political volley in sight—and sharing the RST’s talents was a highlight of my weekend.
At nearly $100,000 for a fully loaded RST with 460 miles of range, this thing is mostly an abstraction, unlikely to lure many traditional truck buyers away from what they know and trust. At that price, the stakes are too high for what-ifs.
And yet, I could see the wheels turning in the minds of my relatives, creaking to life. They were, at the very least, considering an EV in their lives for the first time. That’s no small feat.
While my family was enamored by the RST, it struck me that EVs still have a marketing problem. There are truly compelling EV options in nearly every segment (side bar: the RST is not among them; The cheaper $75,000 Silverado EV certainly is). But not everyone can gather on a sunny winter afternoon to slug cold ones and poke around an EV truck until the wheels start turning.
But we definitely should.
