It was fun while it lasted. The Chevy Blazer EV was available with three drivetrain options for the 2025 model year: single-motor front-wheel drive, single-motor rear-wheel drive, and dual-motor all-wheel drive. For 2026, however, Chevy confirmed to Car and Driver that the rear-drive choice is being dropped. The RWD version was equipped with a heck of a motor, a 365-horsepower unit that suggested Chevy was trying to reach a narrow band of enthusiasts with the offering.
One suspects that narrow band was more of an irrelevant sliver in the end, so goodbye, rear-wheel-drive thrills. Still, there are some Blazer RS’ out there for sale that are configured with RWD, and the pricing can be appealing. A quick search yielded one for about $42,000 after dealer discounts in my neck of the woods (North Jersey), a big drop from the roughly $57,000 MSRP.
The Blazer has been reasonably successful for Chevy, with just over 6,000 of the mid-size EV sold in the first quarter. Bailing on the RWD option implies that the carmaker wants to prioritize the drivetrains that are most popular and not screw up a positive trend.
Less horsepower, less fun
The reconfigured lineup delivers LT and RS trims with a 220-hp motor powering the front wheels or a 300-hp dual-motor AWD option. With that zippy 365-hp RWD RS out of the picture, if you want more power you have to jump to the 615-hp Blazer SS and its 0-to-60-mph time of 3.4 seconds. It has a big old 102-kWh battery pack and tips the scales at over 5,700 pounds. The RWD RS was also good for 334 EPA-rated miles, beating all other Blazer EVs, while the FWD RS did 312 miles. The SS is rated at 303 miles per charge.
It’s not exactly a surprise that Chevy would discontinue the rear-wheel-drive Blazer EV, as it was more expensive than both its FWD and AWD RS trim counterparts, and the configuration was limited to just the RS trim. But it still sucks to lose some interesting choice in a segment where not a lot of interesting powertrain stuff happens these days.
The sad decline of choice
Choice has been on the run in the car business since before EVs started to enter the frame. In their defense, automakers just don’t have the luxury anymore of putting increasingly scarce investment dollars into a something-for-everyone strategy when it comes to their products. Enthusiasts are the clear losers, as profitability has become the industry’s understandable preoccupation. Underperforming trim levels are going to get cut with alacrity.
Let’s not get too hung up on this. At least there’s more choice among EVs nowadays than there was when it was either a Tesla or a Nissan Leaf. It would be churlish to insist that Chevy retain the Blazer EV RS with RWD so that middle-aged dads with Subaru BRZ memories can attempt to induce a bit of tail slide in their family-hauling Chevys. That said, let’s not allow sales numbers to warp reality. After all, EVs are relatively simple things, and sticking a beefier solo motor over the Blazer EV RS’ rear axle wasn’t exactly engineering genius. It was done before and could be done again.
