2020 Chevy Silverado 1500 3.0L Duramax

Given the EPA's full frontal assault on diesel-powered anything and the exhaustive scrutiny it applies to diesel-engine certification in the wake of Volkswagen's Dieselgate scandal, it's a wonder this oil-burning 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 exists at all.
 

Even more remarkable is that, once the Chevy arrives in dealerships later this year, each of the Big Three truckmakers will have a light-duty diesel option.

With this new diesel, Chevy now offers five different engines for its half-ton cash cow. And this one's good. The turbocharged and intercooled 3.0-liter inline-six twists out 460 lb-ft of torque at 1500 rpm and makes a respectable 277 horsepower. The aluminum-constructed powerplant uses a variable-geometry turbo, air-to-liquid intercooling, and a new low-pressure exhaust-gas recirculation system to boost efficiency and responsiveness. And this engine is mighty smooth, thanks to the inherent balance of its inline-six configuration and because it's mated to General Motors' 10-speed automatic transmission featuring a mass-damper-equipped torque converter. Yes, this means that the 3.0-liter diesel manages not to shake Chevy's moneymaker to pieces.

We drove the Silverado 1500 Duramax mostly in and around central Oregon's valleys, exploring the outer reaches of prudence to maximize fuel efficiency and to experience the truck in a way no sane person ever will. The result was fuel economy that no one is likely to reproduce—an OPEC-enraging 40.6 mpg in highway driving, according to the truck's onboard computer. To achieve this feat, however, we kept speeds below 60 mph, left the air conditioning off (and soaked our clothes with sweat in the process), folded the side mirrors, shifted manually, and applied only butterfly kisses to the accelerator pedal.

Parsing the Data

So, we know the results of hypermiling this pickup. We also know that the efficiency of the 3.0-liter Duramax six is not quite as impressive in the real world: Back in Michigan, an all-wheel-drive Silverado 1500 LTZ crew cab, with the Z71 Off-Road and Protection package, 20-inch wheels, and a 3.23:1 axle ratio, returned 26 mpg on our 75-mph highway fuel-economy loop, which is 1 mpg better than what a comparable 2020 Ram 1500 Limited with its optional EcoDiesel V-6 managed. Predictably, this is still shy of the EPA's 29-mpg highway driving estimate. We averaged 23 mpg in the 5653-pound Silverado, which matches its official city estimate. For additional comparison, an all-wheel-drive, extended-cab Silverado 1500 with the new turbo 2.7-liter inline-four averaged 16 mpg with us and posted an 18-mpg return on our highway fuel-economy test.





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