David Rosing is not posting vibes from a dealer lot. He is a former systems engineer at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he left a detailed owner note under a LinkedIn share of Torque News’ report that some Silverado EV buyers are keeping their gas trucks instead of selling them.
His comment splits the truck into three jobs. Road trips work. Job-site power works. A 300-mile towing day still does not.
If a JPL-trained owner says the charging stop is the easy part, and the trailer reserve is the hard part, should truck shoppers still treat “range” as one number?
What Did David Rosing Actually Say About the Silverado EV?
He said the Silverado EV is “almost there for the long haul towing,” then drew a hard line: it does not yet have the 600-mile range needed to make a 300-mile towing job practical.
Then he described the truck he does have. On the first road trip in the Extended Range version, which he called a 400-mile-per-charge truck, the family could “effortlessly” cover 500 miles a day. The pattern was simple: charge overnight at the hotel, drive the morning leg, charge at lunch, finish the day.
Electrify America chargers, he said, got the truck back to 80% state of charge in less time than it took to get lunch. The family had to race back and unplug to avoid an idle penalty for staying too long in the stall. Charge rates reached “upwards of 300 kW/hr on occasion,” but most sessions sat at the 200 kW and 170 kW level.
His conclusion on travel time was blunt. “Time to charge on a long road trip is a nothingburger when you take into consideration family bio breaks.”
He also called the truck a great highway cruiser: quiet and “super roomy.”
The last use case is the one most range charts ignore. At the job site, the EV can offload power for corded tools and tool chargers. Rosing’s point was not that the electric truck replaces a gas truck for constant running. It was that the EV can replace the noisy generator once the crew is on site.
Why Does a 300-Mile Tow Need About 600 Miles of Range?
Rosing did not publish a spreadsheet. He published a working rule.
A 300-mile towing job is not a 300-mile battery problem. It is a reserve problem. Towing increases aerodynamic drag and energy use. Cold weather, hills, wind, and a desire to arrive with usable charge all eat the same pack. Owners who want one charge, or one predictable stop, start looking for roughly double the trip distance in real-world towing range.
That is why his 600-mile figure matters. It is not Chevy’s brochure number. It is an engineer’s margin for a work day that cannot depend on a pull-through charger being open, compatible, and fast enough with a trailer attached.
Chevrolet’s current Silverado EV lineup is already long-legged when the bed is empty. In GM’s 2025 announcement, the Work Truck Max Range is EPA-estimated at 492 miles, the Work Truck Extended Range at 422 miles, and the LT Extended Range at 408 miles. Car and Driver lists the broader current range band at 283 to 493 miles. Rosing’s “400 mile per charge” description fits the Extended Range trucks owners are actually taking on family trips.
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Towing changes that number fast. A Silverado EV LT Extended Range owner reported 150 to 170 miles while pulling a travel trailer. A high-drag heavy load cut another owner down to about 124 miles across Alberta. Those reports do not contradict Rosing. They explain him.
If unladen highway range is about 400 miles, and a demanding trailer cuts that by 40% to 70%, a 300-mile tow is no longer a single-charge job. It becomes a charging-and-unhitching job unless the next pack, or a future high-power pull-through stall, closes the gap.
How Does His Road-Trip Charging Compare With Other GM Truck Owners?
Rosing’s lunch-stop charging is not an outlier. It matches what other GM 800-volt truck owners have been reporting when the cabinet is actually fast.
On an unladen highway day, he covered 500 miles with a hotel charge and one midday session. That lines up with other long-range GM pickups that already handle family travel when overnight power is available. A GMC Sierra EV Max Range owner in Maine reported more than 500 miles on back roads and about 440 miles at 79 mph on the interstate. Another owner turned a 5,300-mile coast-to-coast Sierra EV trip into a charging routine instead of a crisis: at strong Electrify America stalls, he saw peaks around 335 kW and said 100 miles could come back in under 10 minutes.
The network split is the same story Rosing told. He saw occasional sessions near 300 kW and more typical stops around 170 kW to 200 kW. That is consistent with a Sierra EV owner who got only about 85 kW at Tesla’s 250 kW cabinets, then jumped above 240 kW at a 350 kW Electrify America stall. The truck’s peak rating matters less than the dispenser in front of it.
Towing is where the comparison breaks. Rosing will not call a 300-mile loaded job practical yet. Other owners have already shown why. Trailer range in the 150-to-170-mile band, or a 124-mile heavy-tow day, is not a 300-mile work window. A 400-mile unladen pack can hide inside a family lunch stop. The same pack cannot hide inside a contractor’s loaded schedule.
Is Charging Time Really a “Nothingburger” on a Family Trip?
For the trip he described, yes. For a contractor making repeated loaded runs, no.
Those two answers can both be true.
A family lunch stop is 30 to 45 minutes whether the truck is electric or not. If Electrify America can add a large share of the pack in that window, the charge is not extra time. It is parallel time. That is why Rosing had to unplug before the idle fee hit. The truck finished first.
A work day is different. A 300-mile tow with a trailer often means the driver cannot use a standard pull-in stall without unhitching. The stop is no longer a sandwich. It is labor. That is the same friction in the original two-truck driveway story: infrastructure built like car parking, winter and payload losses, and a five-minute diesel fill that still beats a 30-to-40-minute top-off when the schedule is tight.
Rosing is not arguing with that story. He is adding the missing owner who already lives in the two-truck compromise and can explain exactly which half of the compromise is shrinking.
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Can the Silverado EV Replace a Generator on the Job Site?
This is the sleeper hook.
Rosing’s generator point is more commercially useful than another range screenshot. Chevrolet lists up to 10.2 kW of offboard power on Silverado EV trims when equipped. That is not enough to run a whole job trailer like a large diesel generator. It is enough to run corded tools, chargers, lights, and small site loads without idling a gas truck or dragging a separate generator for every light-duty stop.
That changes the two-truck logic. The gas truck stays for constant trips and long tows. The EV becomes the crew shuttle and the quiet power plant once the trucks are parked. Owners who only compare gallons to kilowatt-hours miss that second job.
Is the Silverado EV Best as a Daily Driver, a Road-Trip Truck, or a Work Truck?
Best current fit, based on Rosing’s account plus the broader owner record:
Best as a daily and highway cruiser. Quiet cabin, room, instant torque, home or hotel charging, 500-mile family days with one midday stop.
Best as a job-site support truck. Crew transport plus exportable power for tools.
Not yet best as a one-truck solution for 300-mile towing days. Rosing’s own threshold is about 600 miles of towing range.
Best two-truck combo right now. EV for the high-frequency miles and site power; gas or diesel for winter, remote gaps, and continuous trailer work.
That is also why his comment is stronger than a generic “I like my EV” post. He gave a definition of “almost there.” Almost there means the road-trip problem is largely solved for his family. The towing-reserve problem is not.
What Would Make His 300-Mile Towing Job Practical?
Three things, and only one of them is a bigger battery.
Real towing range closer to 600 miles, or at least a reliable 300-mile towing leg with a large reserve.
Pull-through DC fast charging that does not require unhitching.
Charge rates that stay in the 170–300 kW band with a trailer attached, so a work stop looks like his lunch stop.
Until those land together, Rosing’s driveway looks like the one already showing up in Silverado EV owner reports: keep both trucks. Use the EV because it is the better cruiser and a quieter power source. Keep the gas truck because a 300-mile loaded day still punishes a 400-mile unladen pack.
The story is not that Silverado EV owners are clinging to the past. It is that a JPL-trained owner already ran the numbers on the future and marked the remaining gap in miles, not slogans.
Would you keep a gas truck next to a Silverado EV for that 300-mile tow, or is a 500-mile unladen day with one lunch charge already enough for the way you work?
About The Author
Armen Hareyan is the founder and Editor in Chief of Torque News, where he has covered the automotive industry for over 15 years. Now based in the Charlotte region (Indian Land, SC, he founded Torque News in 2010, which since then has been publishing expert news and analysis about the automotive industry. Armen holds three Masters Degrees, including an MBA, and has become one of the known voices in the industry, specializing in the landscape of electric vehicles and real-world stories of actual car owners. Armen focuses on providing readers with transparent, data-backed analysis bridging the gap of complex engineering and car buyer practicality. Armen regularly attends automotive drive events organized by major car brands throughout the United States, national and local car reveals and personally test-drives new vehicles every week. Armen has also been published as an automotive expert in publications like the Transit Tomorrow, discussing how will autonomous vehicles reshape the supply chain, and emerging technologies in vehicle maintenance.
Read more of Armen’s work on his author profile page.
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