Photo: Jesse Iwuji on YouTube
GM says the 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray is the quickest Corvette of them all, for it needs 2.5 seconds to hit 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour) and 10.5 seconds for the quarter mile. United States Navy Reserve officer and professional stock car racing driver Jesse Iwuji owns an E-Ray that runs 10.6-second quarters consistently at the drag strip, but only if the rear wheels are fitted with super-sticky drag radials.
Still a couple of tenths off the advertised time, but do bear in mind that Iwuji was hampered by the less-than-ideal density altitude. High DA is bad for any car that features a naturally aspirated engine. Hiding under the hood of the E-Ray is a 6.2-liter small block with 495 horsepower and 470 pound-feet (637 Nm) of torque on tap, whereas the front-mounted electric motor isn’t affected by track altitude, barometric pressure, air temp, and relative humidity.
The SAE standard for determining the rated power of a given engine is J2723, which can be summed up like this: 0 percent relative humidity, 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius) for the ambient air temperature, 29.92 inches of mercury, and – as implied by the barometric pressure – sea level. Given the aforementioned, it’s perfectly alright for a stock E-Ray to make 10.7-second passes at the strip instead of the advertised 10.5-second quarter mile.
Photo: Jesse Iwuji on YouTube
Slotted between the Stingray and 670-horse Z06, the E-Ray also happens to be the first-ever Corvette to feature hybrid assistance. By extension, the electric-only Stealth Mode also makes it the first series-production Corvette with front-wheel drive.
Preposterous to some, for sure, but it’s the best of both worlds. No internal combustion would make the Corvette just another performance-oriented electric vehicle, and being a hybrid rather than an electric vehicle makes the ownership experience slightly more uncomplicated. After all, nobody likes to search for a working charging station and wait for approximately an hour for the battery to top up.
Switching to a lesser engine and a higher level of hybridization wouldn’t be okay either. Think four-pot 2024 Mercedes-AMG C 63 as opposed to the previous gen’s unassisted 4.0L twin-turbo V8. Speaking of which, the 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 is just around the corner with a slightly larger twin-turbo eighter derived from the Z06’s engine.
Although it packs in the ballpark of 800 horsepower, the C8-generation ZR1 will be surpassed by the heavily anticipated Zora. Best described as Corvette ZR1 meets Corvette E-Ray, the hybridized twin-turbo V8 monster could level up the C8 Corvette to approximately 1,000 ponies.
