The Via VTRUX Is The Laughably Terrible Plug-In Hybrid Chevy Silverado You Forgot Existed

If you’ve somehow escaped all of our takes, your favorite Autopian writers are big fans of plug-in hybrids, especially if they’re serial hybrids like the Chevrolet Volt or BMW i3. But not all PHEVs are built the same. Some are so disappointing you’re better off just leaving the hybrid part behind. There was a time when auto legend Bob Lutz saw a future in PHEVs so bright that he started a company to cater to an empty market of PHEV trucks. The Via Motors VTRUX was a series hybrid platform applied to Chevy Silverados, Suburbans, and Express vans. They were good in theory, but the VTRUX ended up being too expensive, too underwhelming, and not compelling enough.

The Via Motors VTRUX was slated to be an entry in our new Unholy Fails series. The VTRUX has all of the hallmarks of what could have been a Holy Grail, only to end up being less than the sum of its parts. This is a failure that isn’t even ten years old, yet I’m willing to bet some of our readers don’t know about it.

This time around, I won’t be nominating the VTRUX as an Unholy Fail by myself, because the charismatic Robert Dunn of Aging Wheels did it for me. He got to test a Via Motors VTRUX and somehow, despite the truck having relatively low mileage and not being that old, it’s incapable of living up to its manufacturer’s promise:

Dunn gets right into the truck, so I will give you some backstory.

The 100 MPG Hummer

Back in the late 2000s, the automotive industry was really getting into experimentation with ways to either electrify vehicles or build hyper-efficient vehicles. This was a time when the Toyota Prius was popular, but the first-generation Honda Insight was the mpg king. Volkswagen was also making strides in getting people to buy “clean diesel” cars. Remember the Elio? Yeah, that thing was originally a concept from the late 2000s, too!

Via Motors technically starts with Utah-based firm Raser Technologies. In the late 2000s, Raser was known for its geothermal plants, but it wanted to crack into the automotive industry. In 2009, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up to the 2009 SAE World Congress in Detroit in the so-called “100 MPG” Raser Electric Hummer H3. Yep, Raser claimed that you’d get 100 mpg in this SUV. However, it used fine print to clarify that said driving was limited miles around town.

The H3, which was built with help from supplier FEV, featured a 625-volt lithium battery, a 268 HP electric motor, and a four-cylinder GM Ecotec engine acting as a 134 HP generator for the EV system. Raser claimed anywhere between 40 miles of range on EV power alone. After which, the gas generator fired up. Well, as it turned out, the 100 mpg claim was only true if you never drove further than 60 miles. Then fuel economy sank to 33 mpg, which was still better than the base SUV, but not as headline-grabbing as the 100 mpg claim.

Raser then tried to buy the Hummer brand itself, but it failed to make a good enough bid to stop GM from killing the brand. Raser started shopping around for investors or anyone willing to give it enough money to put its series hybrid technology into mass production. In 2010, Via Motors became a new company spun off from Raser. In 2011, help arrived when Bob Lutz hung up his hat at GM and joined Via Motors, giving the new firm some credibility. This made sense because Bob Lutz was a huge supporter of the Chevy Volt, and now he had a chance to take that basic concept further.

The VTRUX

Via Motors would stay in the GM ecosystem. Only instead of working with Hummers, Via would convert GM’s large trucks, SUVs, and vans into series hybrid vehicles. The VTRUX was announced in 2011 and the concept was just like any other plug-in series hybrid.

As Dunn explains, Via Motors purchased a few hundred to a few thousand or so half-ton Silverado with a 4.6-liter 297 HP and 330 lb-ft torque V6 engine. To facilitate the conversion to series hybrid, Via removed the transmission and in its place, fitted a 201 HP electric generator and a 254 HP and 306 lb-ft of torque electric motor. Behind those and bolted to the frame was a 24 kWh (22.5 kWh nominal) battery. Yes, the electric motor on this bad boy isn’t even as powerful as the gas engine charged with keeping the truck going. Via claimed a 9.7-second sprint to 60 mph and somehow the truck is even slower than claimed.

Here’s how it works. The gas engine acts as a gas generator, which drives the electric generator behind it. The electric generator then puts juice into the batteries and also provides power to plugs in the rear for 120V and 140V (max output 14.4kW) jobsite power. The electric motor, which lives where the transmission used to be, connects to the transfer case, which spins the driveshaft into the differential, finally reaching the wheels. If you think that’s inefficient, you’d be right, but the Via VTRUX weren’t so much proper PHEVs as they were converted trucks.

Via advertised a 7,500-pound GVWR and a payload rating of just 1,000 pounds. All of the heavy gear and the parts to make it work ate up the rest of the Silverado’s payload. Via also advertised a range of 40 miles of pure EV range and up to 400 miles of extended-range driving. Much like Raser did, Via used some fuzzy math to claim that the VTRUX got 120 mpg, so long as you didn’t drive farther than 60 miles in a day. If you drive 100 miles in a day, that fuzzy math landed at 30 mpg.

And if you do need to go farther? As Dunn finds out, the engine may not be connected to the wheels, but it revs up and down randomly and weirdly. Fuel economy with the engine running is no better than the base truck without the hybrid bits. Thus, a VTRUX worked best if you kept trips short. Other VTRUX variations include a VTRUX Suburban and a VTRUX Express, but those are even rarer than these Silverados are.

Ten years and 47,000 miles after it was built, the VTRUX tested by Dunn got half of its advertised range. Dunn also notes that the battery system is incapable of putting out full power for very long. If you’re climbing a hill, the truck runs out of power until it almost can’t even hold speed.

The conversion left some artifacts behind, too, such as the fact that the cruise control system’s buttons don’t work anymore, the truck’s original systems sometimes freak out and display error messages, and the gearchange buttons on the shift column do nothing. Granted, they wouldn’t do anything anyway since the transmission left the chat.

Via also modified the stock instrument cluster, but didn’t bother to try matching Chevy’s font. Overall, the VTRUX seemed like something better than a shed build, but not quite as good as a proper PHEV built by a real manufacturer. Oh, and if you want to know the exact state of charge, that’s too bad. The instrument cluster gets a vague gauge. If you want a more exact number, you have to pop the side hatch and turn on the jobsite power.

If none of this was bad enough, it was really hard for VTRUX owners to actually save money. Quoting an Idaho National Laboratory demonstration, Dunn points out that the trucks in the study drove on EV power only 17 percent of the time. Once the engine fired up, the trucks got a whopping 18 mpg.

It Costs How Much?

The worst part was the price. A 2014 Chevy Silverado WT 4WD Crew Cab was $38,050 ($51,003 today). Apply the VTRUX treatment and that same truck was now worth $76,100 ($102,006 today). Via Motors sold these trucks to fleets and it won’t surprise you that they didn’t catch on. The VTRUX was such a flop that Via Motors canceled the PHEV project and started working on pure EVs, which would also bear the VTRUX name.

I won’t spoil the rest, because the video is a hilarious watch. Watch Aging Wheels for more details on this catastrophe of a truck. Some people do like ’em, because you can still tow trailers and have that helpful electric power. Still, Via Motors produced a truck that was slower and heavier than the base truck, charged twice the price for it, and all you got was a 17 percent reduction in fuel consumption. It might be a while before another vehicle unseats this Unholy Fail.

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