Luxury Heavy-Duty Trucks Are Officially a Thing, Do We Care About Anything Else?

The current turmoil seems to affect legacy automakers only marginally. Sure, they brag about the EV revolution (and then they make an icon an ICE-exclusive feature, like the 2024 Ford Mustang), about how they need to adapt to the latest consumer trends (and then ignore people’s requests), or even make grandiose promises. And then they make them humongous, quite literally.

For example, this autumn has been a heavy hitter, both figuratively and literally, at least from the American heavy-duty pickup truck sector’s POV. During the first days of the season, Ram Trucks updated its HD line of models with a host of notable updates, including an optional 12-inch frameless digital instrument cluster, additional smarter tech (including for trailering), and other goodies.

That was not a bad start, at all, but more was yet to come. A couple of days ahead of the eagerly anticipated presentation of one Blue Oval, the 2024 Chevy Silverado HD broke the Internet silence and was officially unveiled with a more powerful Duramax V8 turbo diesel. Alas, the latter is not as torquey as Stellantis’ Ram HD Cummins engine or Ford’s Super Duty Power Stroke diesel. Plus, the all-new fifth-gen Super Duty also welcomed into the stable a new 6.8-liter gasoline V8 and confirmed a high-output diesel.

Not to leave the last word to its rivals, General Motors programmed one last ace up its unveiling sleeve afterward: the 2024 GMC Sierra HD lineup. And the family has even grown with the new AT4X (an alter ego for Silverado HD’s upcoming, teased ZR2) off-road trim and the posh Denali Ultimate luxury grade. Not bad, right? It seems as if all three Detroit manufacturers act like fossil fuels and Earth’s atmosphere is just as prone to survival as our solar system’s star.

By the way, while scientists mostly agree that our Sun does not have enough mass to explode into a full-blown supernova, it will instead expand into a red giant around five to six billion years from now. By then, we are all going to be extinct as a civilization or we will have learned how to travel among the stars, or perhaps we might have finally achieved harmony with our planet.

But for now, most automakers – especially the ones making these gas guzzlers – are acting like they too have five billion years of unlimited energy supply… Unfortunately, the alternative is not here yet. There are no EV heavy-duty pickup trucks, only luxury ones. Nicely enough, some people will forget about the tradesman features of these work trucks when meeting the layers of luxury exhibited by the GMC Sierra Denali Ultimate.

Well, that is another threshold achieved by the automotive industry, right after Rolls-Royce, Cadillac, Lamborghini, and Ferrari started producing ultra-luxury and super-SUVs. I am ‘eagerly’ waiting for the moment when McLaren will introduce its own posh, exotic pickup truck, when Koenigsegg will join the party with a hyper-SUV, or when Tesla finally releases its Cybertruck into the wild, for it to go fishing in the San Francisco Bay, or something!

Meanwhile, I want to give a positive shout-out to Honda and GM for having the audacity to produce EV crossover SUVs (hopefully, affordable ones) on the same Ultium basis. Sure, the Honda Prologue may only be a Chevy Blazer EV with Japanese styling, but at least they are trying something. Yeah, climate change does not stand a chance (of being stopped) these days… and we’re the ones losing the battle, actually.