AUTONEWS

The electric Chevrolet S10 1998 is rare and had less than 500 units produced

Back in the 1990s, many people thought electric cars were going to hit the market in a big way. General Motors won many admirers with the EV-1, a near-revolutionary vehicle that met an untimely end when the company abruptly shut down the program.

While that’s the car history remembers, there was a lesser-known GM EV from the same period in a radically different form: the S10 Electric.

Information about these rudimentary electric pickup trucks is simply not widely available. That’s a big reason why it’s surprising to see Keith Dillman’s Facebook group post about the three electric S10s he owns.

Considering that GM built just 492 of these vehicles between 1997 and 1998, that’s impressive. It’s even more impressive when you learn that all but 60 of them were destroyed along with the EV-1s.

And of that small fraction of trucks that survived, most became government vehicles. Dillman’s three S10 Electrics are 1997 models with part numbers 42, 107, and 145. Interestingly, they were also government pickup trucks that he believes served at Robbins Air Force Base. “The S10 Electric had the power of General Motors behind it,” Dillman says. “There’s actually a lot of advanced technology in it—the problem was the batteries. That’s why they failed. 

They were destined to fail. There was no way they could succeed.” In fact, the lead-acid batteries in Dillman’s three trucks are now useless. He bought his first S10 Electric around 2018, and yet he’s never driven one. That means he’s spent the last seven years or so just tinkering, trying to fix what he can while he waits for a lithium-iron-phosphate battery that’s being built specifically for trucks like his. 

Dillman says he’s done a lot of tinkering on the first S10 Electric he bought. Everything runs on a 12-volt circuit, which operates as it should. This one even has a working diesel heater. Yes—these vehicles have a one-gallon diesel tank behind the regular fuel door that feeds a small water heater. Since the drivetrain’s heat pump doesn’t work well in freezing temperatures, there’s a switch on the dash that activates the diesel heater. It even has a one-inch stainless steel exhaust pipe that discharges behind the rear tire. 

Finding parts for these vehicles can be difficult, as you might expect. Dillman says that if you want something that’s in high demand, like the front bumper panel, you’ll just have to buy the entire truck. But he found that all of the S10 Electric (and EV-1) part numbers are eight digits long, starting with “2700.” He searched the Vintage Parts website and bought everything he could that met that criteria “without even knowing what most of the stuff was, because there’s no pictures, or the descriptions are poor or have abbreviations or something.”

“I just bought everything they had,” Dillman continued. “If they had two, I’d buy two. If they had seven, I’d buy seven. I just bought everything. And I got some really cool stuff, some stuff that I really needed, like the charging port, the original charging port in the box, some stuff.”

And that brings us to the batteries. Dillman says he struggled with lead-acid batteries for years without success.

Finally, he and a few other S10 Electric owners banded together to group-buy California-based Trajectory EV to make lithium-iron-phosphate batteries for their pickups.

They paid half up front, with the rest due when they got their batteries, and so far, “four or five” have received their deliveries. “I don’t,” Dillman continued, “but it’s been years of chasing this thing, and I don’t want to rush anything.”

The new battery has been the most expensive part of the process by far. Dillman said that at $12,000 per pack, he’s buying just one and plans to rotate it between all three trucks instead of investing $36,000 in them. When cold weather sets in in Indiana, where he lives, he’ll put the battery in warm storage to preserve the life of the cells. That should help the truck maintain its projected 150-mile range, which is plenty for weekend trips and visits to car shows. 

Considering that S10 EVs equipped with lead-acid batteries could supposedly go only 60 miles at a constant 45 mph before running out of juice, 150 miles on a full charge seems like a dream. That’s what’s in store for these trucks; no trips to pick up mulch or rocks or anything like that. These are collector vehicles, and Dillman plans to treat them as such. And while he wants to keep all three as complete as possible, he realizes that there may come a time when one of them will have to be used for parts. If that’s the case, so be it.

“I’ll just put batteries in it and be happy,” Dillman added. “If anyone wants to buy them, they can buy them from my wife when I’m dead.”

Apparently, there’s another collector who Dillman claims has “probably 80 percent” of the S10 Electrics still in existence. They’re said to be covered in moss and deteriorating.

Mundoquatrorodas