“But when you drive an E-Ray, you just fire it up and drive it. It’s just a hybrid. It charges the battery for you. It does everything. If you want to override and make it charge the battery faster, there’s a button for that. But other than that, that’s pretty much it, and keep it simple, keep it usable.”
He added that if manufacturers were given “some kind of credit from the regulators” in order to hit a certain electric-only range, “then I would consider [PHEV] for this version of the car”.
Looking forward, Roma said that when it does eventually come, the electric Corvette will need to be “engaging” instead of just fast because 0-62mph times are becoming a “meaningless metric” as “every car is incredibly fast.”
Instead, the brand will need to look at how to be different because buyers will soon drive “a brutally fast [electric] sedan” every day and so will “want something different”.
Roma said: “And so that’s our challenge – to come up with that something different, that something engaging.
“When you’re buying a car like a Corvette, why are you buying it? You’re buying it because you want something special. You want to be engaged in the art of driving.
“And so when we can figure out how to do that, and as we put more electrification in the car, we will, but we’re not going to do an electric version of this car just to do it. That would defeat the entire purpose.
“Everybody should just take a deep breath and relax, and we’ll get there when it’s time.”
Roma also said GM won’t accelerate development of an EV Corvette just so the car can stay on sale in Europe after 2035. “We will not make a car just to meet that regulation,” he said.
From 2035, all new cars sold in the European Union and the UK must emit zero emissions when driven, meaning that only electric cars will be allowed on sale. As such, to continue being sold here, Corvette must bring to market an EV.