Mechanic 'wants to retire' after opening the hood of Chevy Silverado EV truck that its owner brought to him

An iconic mechanic, The Car Wizard decided he wanted to ‘retire’ after opening the hood of a Chevy Silverado EV truck that his friend Tyler Hoover brought to him.

The electric pickup may look like a traditional Chevy truck from the outside, but underneath the hood was a very different story.

The Car Wizard was confronted by a dense maze of wiring, electronics, and cooling systems that made the Silverado EV look seriously complicated to work on.

And when they finally got the truck onto the lift, they discovered it was almost too heavy for the equipment in the garage.

Why the Chevy Silverado EV is a nightmare for a mechanic

The Silverado EV belongs to YouTuber Tyler Hoover of Hoovies Garage, who bought the former Hertz rental for $37,000 with 16,000 miles on the clock to his mechanic friend, The Car Wizard.

It cost considerably less than the truck’s almost $80,000 sticker price when new, and Hoovie said the more he drove it, the more he liked it.

The appeal is obvious, with around 450 miles of practical range, four-wheel drive and roughly 500 horsepower.

But when Hoover took it to the Car Wizard to see what was hiding underneath, the mechanic wasn’t exactly blown away by the design.

“That’s a complicated bowl of spaghetti electric pickup truck,” Hoovie admitted when they finally got under the hood.

Getting to some of the components wasn’t particularly straightforward either, because a huge amount of bracing and metal had to be removed before he could reach what’s underneath.

The Silverado EV uses GM’s dedicated Ultium electric platform, rather than taking a gas-powered pickup and converting it to electric power.

The same basic vibe under the hood would be found in vehicles like the GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Escalade IQ.

Underneath the hood, Hoovie and the Wizard found electric motors, thick wiring bundles, cooling equipment, air-conditioning components, brake hardware, and a tiny 12-volt battery.

The Car Wizard also pointed out that many of the components have computers built into them, potentially making repairs much more expensive.

“Everything’s going to be two grand, five grand, eight grand,” he said, thinking of all the parts as ‘stupid expensive’ and difficult to fix.

And then came another problem: the truck was seriously heavy.

The Silverado EV was estimated to weigh around 8,500-9,800 pounds, which put the shop’s 8,500-pound lift right at its limit.

Eventually, they got it raised, but the Car Wizard admitted he was nervous about putting such a huge electric truck onto the equipment.

Hide your fingers (and your hotdogs)

The teardown also revealed one particularly bizarre problem with the Silverado EV’s powered latch.

Hoovie wanted to see whether the truck would detect something caught in the latch, much like the infamous Cybertruck finger tests, because when he was a kid, his Grandpa got his fingers stuck in the hood of a Chevy pickup.

But instead of risking their actual fingers, the pair used some hot dog sausages because they mimic fingers.

The sausages were placed into the hood and the Silverado EV’s powered latch mechanism was closed, but it didn’t stop.

“Holy moly. That would be some severely broken bones right there,” he said.

The latch continued to crush down on the hot dogs, with the pair discovering that it appeared to have no intention of releasing the pressure and the sausages even broke off inside the latch, showing what would happen to some fingers.

Things became even more concerning when the latch then refused to open.

“Okay, so you’ve amputated my fingers,” they joked as they struggled to release it.

Eventually, they found a small emergency manual release that could be pulled twice to pop the latch open.

“So, in case of emergency, there’s a little gray pull right there,” the mechanic explained. “You pull it twice and it should pop.”

The discovery led to a pretty straightforward conclusion from the pair: don’t try the test with your actual fingers.

There were plenty of positives under the truck, though.

The Car Wizard was impressed by its beefy suspension components, huge springs, substantial brakes and enormous battery pack, which is more than 200 kWh.

Unlike some of the more complicated high-end electric trucks, the basic Silverado EV Work Truck also uses conventional suspension rather than air suspension and doesn’t have four-wheel steering.

For Hoover, that’s part of the appeal, because ‘it reminds [him] of an old school heavy-duty Chevy truck’.

But the combination of its enormous weight, densely packed electronics and potentially expensive components could give mechanics plenty of headaches as these trucks get older.

After seeing what was hiding underneath the hood, the Car Wizard might have had good reason to start thinking about retirement.