Corvette Boss Tony Roma Doesn’t Plan to Force an All-Electric Vette

In a recent interview with CBS News, GM boss Mary Barra rode with correspondent Kris Van Cleave in the new Escalade IQ, the all-electric SUV that will launch with 700 horsepower and 460-plus miles of range. When Van Cleave asked Barra if GM was still looking to be all-electric by 2035, Barra answered in the affirmative, hedging that the company will do so with its light-duty vehicles, an initiative kicked off in 2021. "The plans we have in place will get us there," said Barra.

This doesn't mean that Corvette will be ditching its gasoline engines in a hurry. Van Cleave also got a ride in the new 1064-hp ZR1 with Tony Roma, the new executive chief engineer of the Corvette, who just took the reins from a retiring Tadge Jeuchter. "You still need to stress the components to correlate the model," said Roma as he helmed the hypercar Corvette on the Milford Proving Ground track. Sounds like as good an excuse as any to do some donuts in a car with four-digit horsepower.

Smokey burnouts aside, the most interesting point for enthusiasts came when Van Cleave asked Roma if Corvette always needs to be a gas-powered vehicle. "We talk about this a lot. I talk about this with enthusiasts, my friends, other engineers," explained Roma. "We're not going to apply electrification just for the sake of it. We don't put technology on for technology's sake, so it kind of has to earn its way in. It has to make the car better in some way that our customers are gonna respond to."

Corvettes have changed a lot in the last decade, as the move to mid-engine for the C8 enabled a whole different level of performance. The current Z06 and ZR1 models wouldn't have been possible with a front-engine car, and the hybrid, AWD E-Ray would not have worked out, either, with the packaging of a front-mid-engine layout like the C7 had.

As we've noted before, we feel the Corvette is in great hands, and the expanding portfolio and performance envelope of "America's sports car" seems to be proof that Chevrolet is not giving up on enthusiasts. Mary Barra said it well: "One of the strengths of General Motors is that we're giving people choice."