The 2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV is a huge vehicle. I’ve sampled the new gas-powered Equinox, and this one feels like driving a living room by comparison. It’s also extremely comfortable, comes standard with gigantic instrument and infotainment displays, and can travel 319 miles on a full charge. It is, in short, a lot of car—especially for its base price of $34,995, shipping included.
Personally, I don’t need a big SUV like this. Count me among the chorus of seemingly internet-only people who really lamented the tiny Bolt’s death—that vehicle was and is the perfect size for an entry-level EV. But even a small-car advocate like myself can’t ignore the immense value here. Typically when automakers deliver vehicles to us critics, they give us cars with all the bells and whistles. In this case, Chevy handed me the keys to the least-equipped Equinox EV there is, and I’m so happy it did because it really drove the point home: This thing is a bargain.
The Basics
2025 technically marks the Equinox EV’s second model year, even though it’s only really been in showrooms since May. When it launched then, the cheapest trim on offer cost about $43K. But now, the base Equinox EV LT is available for just $34,995. I won’t factor in the $7,500 federal EV tax credit because who the hell knows what will become of that, but either way, this is about as inexpensive as EVs get nowadays.
Typically for such a low price, you have to accept poor range and a cramped interior. However, the Equinox EV’s base front-wheel-drive, single-motor configuration offers up 220 horsepower and 243 lb-ft of torque from an 85-kWh battery pack that promises 319 miles on a full charge. We’ll get into how that works out in the real world later, but the first impression on paper is strong.
All that said, this isn’t the kind of vehicle that makes a design statement. The exterior follows every tenet of an electric SUV: long roof, low floor, and a front end that doesn’t face headwinds so much as slip through them. It looks unremarkably fine, which means it’s on target for a mass-market crossover. Inside, materials are solid—no qualms with the plastics at all in this car—and I am happy to say the base cloth seats are excellent.
You Aren’t Better Than CarPlay
The only thing that could mar this otherwise fine interior is GM’s own hubris to spurn Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in its EVs. Yes, the stock 11-inch digital instrument cluster and 17.7-inch center touchscreen are generous standard equipment, but GM’s Google-based operating system misuses all that real estate with a haphazard, confounding UI design.
I appreciate that there are still physical controls for the HVAC system, but core vehicle functions like power and one-pedal driving settings are dumped in a block of software buttons underneath the big volume knob, denoted by tiny icons that all look alike and are obscured by the steering wheel. Surely there had to be a better spot for these. If you want to change the info shown on the instrument cluster, you can’t do that by pressing a button on the wheel, as you would in any other car; instead, you need to fiddle with menus on the center screen to throw widgets over to the driver’s panel.
To add insult to injury, because there’s no CarPlay, every time you’re streaming music from your phone and get a ping, a volume bar will show up like you’re sitting in a 2013 Sonic. And if you decide at some point that you want to stop listening to music and stream a podcast from your phone in a different app, you can’t use the car’s display for that, so you’ll have to pull over. It’s all just user-hostile—there are no other words for it.
Driving the Chevrolet Equinox EV
It’s quiet, it’s comfortable, and even in single-motor form, it’s peppy enough. Turns out that 243 lb-ft of instant torque is enough for a brisk experience around town and passing, though the base Equinox EV certainly begins to run out of steam past the highway speed limit. Even mass-market EVs today are advertised with the promise of stunning straight-line performance, but this isn’t that kind of car. And if you drive it like it is, you’ll crater efficiency very quickly anyway.
One point of note on the Equinox EV’s one-pedal driving mode. I’ll be frank: I don’t drive EVs very often. Chalk it up to renting a rural-ish condo with outdoor parking where the likelihood of a public charger getting installed is about as good as a humanity-altering asteroid hitting the Earth in the next 10 years. So, when I get into an EV like the Equinox, I immediately have to recalibrate my brain and right foot. I feared I might get into an accident given how quickly this big SUV slows down when you’re off-throttle in one-pedal mode, so I turned that off.
This was the right call, for me. There is still some regen when you’re coasting in two-pedal mode, but not enough to be jarring. And the brake blending—the progression from regenerative braking to the slow uptake of the pads and rotors beyond a certain point of pressure—is very natural. GM’s done an excellent job here. For my uses, I did find the Equinox EV’s “Regen On Demand” paddle behind the steering wheel a bit strange, if only because it’s binary. There’s no analog quality of, say, pressing it further for more regen, like a trigger on a video game controller, so I barely touched it.
Range, Charging, and Efficiency
The single-motor, front-wheel-drive Chevy Equinox EV is rated for 319 miles on a full charge; dual-motor AWD cars go 12 miles fewer. Unfortunately, such estimates don’t mean much during an especially frigid February in the Northeast. I’d estimate the pack delivered 50% to 60% of that range by the time I reduced the battery to 15% capacity and scrambled to find a fast charger. Such is life when you’ve got an EV and no at-home charging solution.
I eventually found an EVgo fast charger supposedly good for up to 100 kW; her name was Lagertha. I would’ve loved to use one of the many available Tesla Superchargers at this particular station, but the Equinox EV keeps with the CCS connector for 2025, and I wasn’t provided one of GM’s NACS adapters.
Anyway, as multiple reviews on PlugShare tell, Lagertha hasn’t hit the 100-kW mark in quite some time—and even if she did, I’m not sure the Equinox EV would’ve been able to take advantage. Our friends at InsideEVs explain this in more detail than we have time to get into here, but the limited voltage of the Equinox EV’s battery pack basically keeps it from hitting its advertised peak 150-kW throughput unless you’re plugging into a seriously fast charger, like one capable of 350 kW. Perhaps due to this, compounded with Lagertha’s own issues, I never saw speeds rise above 60 kW, and it took nearly 80 minutes to get the battery from 15% to 90%.
Considering the cold, it was little surprise that I averaged about 2.3 miles per kW during my time with the Equinox EV. The vast majority of my driving happened on back roads with liberal use of the heater; all told, I spent roughly a half hour hovering around 70 mph on the highway.
The Verdict
When you step back and look at what the cheapest Chevy Equinox EV offers on paper—319 miles of range in ideal conditions, massive screens, and a ton of space—all for $35,000, you expect a catch. Aside from my frustrations with GM’s infotainment, I really couldn’t find any. The seats are especially comfortable, the experience behind the wheel is smooth and responsive, you still get that instant torque (at lower speeds, anyway), and the fit and finish is top-tier for this price range.
There may be other EVs that charge a bit quicker, are nicer to look at, or are better at overtaking. As a complete package, though, Chevy’s delivered something hard to fault—especially if space for people and things is a major consideration. Even the speakers in this base LT model sound excellent. I’d hesitate to recommend a lot of cars today in bone-stock trim, but the Equinox EV sure isn’t one of them.
| 2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV Specs | FWD | AWD |
|---|---|---|
| Base Price (as tested) | $34,995 ($34,995) | $38,295 |
| Powertrain | single-motor front-wheel drive | 85-kWh battery | dual-motor all-wheel drive | 85-kWh battery |
| Horsepower | 220 | 300 |
| Torque | 243 lb-ft | 355 lb-ft |
| Seating Capacity | 5 | << |
| Curb Weight | 4,923 pounds | 5,041 pounds |
| Towing Capacity | 1,500 pounds | << |
| Cargo Volume | 26.4 cubic feet behind second row | 57.2 cubic feet behind first row | << |
| EPA Range | 319 miles | 307 miles |
| Max DC Charging Rate | 150 kW | << |
| Score | 8.5/10 |
Quick Take
The Equinox EV is a fully-featured entry-level EV even in its base trim, marred only by some tech interface quirks.
