The Joys and Woes of Charging Our 2025 Chevrolet Blazer EV RS RWD
Living with this electric SUV is mostly a breeze, but we’ve found room for improvement.
Daily driving an EV and relying exclusively on public charging is getting easier with each passing year. Not only has the number of stations continued to increase, but widespread Supercharger access is becoming a reality as automakers begin to offer North American Charging System (NACS) compatibility with their vehicles.
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Such is the case with our yearlong review 2025 Chevrolet Blazer EV, which arrived with a NACS adapter when we took delivery five months ago. Our SUV’s ability to use Superchargers came in handy as early as our first road trip, when we drove from Los Angeles to East Tucson and back. Now that we’ve spent more time commuting, shopping, and transporting friends in the Blazer EV, we’re happy to report that solely utilizing public charging has been a happy affair. Until it wasn’t.
The Pros
One of the biggest advantages to driving the Blazer EV daily is that it can fast-charge with a Tesla Supercharger whenever we need to quickly juice up the battery. Hooked up to a Tesla V3 Supercharger, which dispenses a maximum of 250 kW, we come close to the Blazer EV’s peak charge rate of 190 kW—that’s better than vehicles like the Hyundai Ioniq 5, which plateaued at 126 kW using the latest 325-kW Tesla V4 Supercharger cabinet in our testing.
During our most recent Supercharging session at Tesla’s Culver City, California, location, the Blazer EV capped out at 181 kW before dropping off. Perhaps more impressively, we averaged over 100 kW of charging power from the Supercharger between the start at 21 percent until the battery hit the 65 percent mark. To our surprise, the Blazer was still accepting 88 kW when the battery was at an 80 percent state of charge. In total, charging from 21 to 91 percent took 47 minutes, longer than getting gas but swifter than using a lower-output Level 3 charger. What’s more, there wasn’t a line when we arrived at the Supercharger station in the middle of the day. We’ll have to do a complete charging test for an apples-to-apples comparison with the Hyundai Ioniq 5, but our initial impressions have been positive.
Level 3 fast charging isn’t always the best way to put more electrons into our Blazer EV’s battery, though. We’ve come to rely on Level 2 charging from the ChargePoint stations at MotorTrend’s office in El Segundo. When we pop into the building for a day of productivity, the Blazer EV sips electricity from a J-1772 plug. A typical eight-hour charge provides as much as 41.82 kW, which translates to 136 miles of range, just over 40 percent of its battery capacity. The charge would be even quicker with upgraded hardware; the Blazer EV is plumbed to accept up to 11.5 kW from a Level 2 charger, and our office Level 2s max out at just 6.1 kW.
Going to the office once or twice a week gives me more than enough range to keep the Blazer EV on the road. Our car’s EPA-rated range of 334 miles and real-world road trip range of 275 miles gives us the flexibility to add only as much charge as needed to get around.
Beyond as-needed road trip charging at Level 3 stations and regularly scheduled stops at ChargePoint’s Level 2 stalls, we’ve enjoyed using streetside charging whenever convenient. Flo, a charging network with curbside EV chargers, has continued to install units throughout the greater Los Angeles area. My gym, for example, has a Flo right around the corner. Whenever it’s available, I hook up the Blazer EV and get some extra range while I work out. It’s cheap, too, costing just $3.31 for my most recent session of an hour and 39 minutes. A short stint like that gets 11.6 kW of electricity and 33 miles of range, much more than I used getting to the gym.
All the while, the myChevrolet app has been a useful tool for keeping track of the Blazer EV while it charges. The interface gives a readout of the vehicle’s current state of charge and range in addition to providing an estimate of when the charge will complete. You can see your vehicle’s location on the map, too, in case you left your car charging on the street and can’t remember how to get back to it.
We’ve finally had a chance to initiate charges on Tesla Supercharges with Chevy’s app, as well. It essentially loads up a browser version of Tesla’s own app within the myChevrolet interface, serving as convenient shortcut if you only want to use one app.
