2021 Chevy Tahoe | Trying to Do Everything

[Music] [Applause] inside the tahoe now the first thing to talk about is the cargo capacity and passenger space now the overall wheelbase of the current generation or new tahoe has increased by four percent versus the prior generation truck however through clever packaging specifically in the floor pan they've managed to increase the overall cargo capacity by 30 percent and more importantly when the third rows up the rear trunk space has increased 66 making this genuinely usable now let's talk about passenger room or passenger comfort now if you're a breeder the general has you covered you can fit up to six of your spawn in this vehicle meaning there's a total seating capacity for seven the second row has captains chairs they slide manually forward and aft and they have some adjustment however if you equip this vehicle you can electronically control them or fold them flat from the rear the third row is a bench now theoretically you can fit three back there however i would only do that if you don't love your children now let's talk about some of the fundamental differences between the tahoe and suburban before we talk about interior space for your knick-knacks now when it comes to the suburban the suburban is supposed to look more stately it is the larger vehicle all of the extra space is behind the third row however your third row does get slightly more legroom at about an inch the rest of the vehicle when it comes to trim options powertrain options and trim levels are identical the tahoe again is a little smaller and it's supposed to be the sportier vehicle because nothing says sport like a 6 000 pound suv now you may be wondering what about space for my knick-knacks jack don't worry the tahoe has you covered the door cards are triple stacked like your cold cuts what i mean by that is there are three pockets your top pocket is for something like a wallet or some coins your second pocket is large enough for a smaller size water bottle or your sunglasses and your third bottom pocket is the large one it's big enough for all of your various knickknacks including a liter sized bottle of water my nalgene bottle will fit the center console area is flanked by two mini pockets on both sides large enough for a pair of sunglasses and then your center console area itself is enormous the center cubby is triple stacked again like the door cars you have a top pocket for or top storage solution for something like a phone when you lift this up the cargo area is large enough for a full-size purse then when you activate the electronically sliding armrest yes this electronically slides forward and aft you reveal an even larger area for your things and this thing also has a mini hideaway glovebox area or basically a small compartment for your extremely valuable items the other cargo solutions in this front area are this spring-loaded trap door thing that you can fit a set of sunglasses in and a cavernously large glove box now let's talk about seat comfort the tahoe does not have the sportiest of seats and what i mean by that is you have room to grow because there are limited bolsters your seat bottoms essentially have no blisters they're basically flat however they are still comfortable for shorter drivers and the seat bolsters on the side are also very wide so if you are a larger human being way past 250 pounds you will probably fit with no problems and on top of that you have a tremendous amount of headroom my only complaint when it comes to these seats other than the lack of bolstering for sportier driving is the seat bottoms they are pretty short so again if you have longer legs you might find them a little bit uncomfortable so with that let's talk about the electronics let's start with chevy mylink you have an all-new giant display it doesn't have the highest resolution however i will say the infotainment system itself is fast to react the cameras available in this truck are tremendous you have a 360 cam a front facing cam and a rear-facing cam your individual settings are easy to navigate and the menus are great the structure makes total sense and the way you interact with it is a series of redundant controls so your core controls are physical like volume track selection and you have a rotary dial on the right side that allows you to manually scroll through all the different applications and menus on top of that you can also interact with it using simple touch controls your hvac system all your controls are physical chunky and you can use them easily with gloves now the gauge cluster you have two giant analog gauges they're easy to read thankfully the center display as well your five inch digital display also has all of your necessary auxiliary information like your trans temp your water temp your oil pressure and your fuel economy last thing to talk about on this interior is the audio system it's a bose system and i will say it's a step up from the prior generation bow system i've listened to and that's largely because the noise floor in this vehicle is so low it is incredibly quiet so with that let's head to the shop so mark we're underneath the 2021 tahoe z71 now the tahoe suburban the gmc counterparts and the escalade are all in the same architecture it's the t1x architecture which is also shared with chevy trucks however this architecture has given them the flexibility to add an irs in the rear you get independent rear suspension now on the new tahoes and suburbans and a flat load floor which allows you to have more stuff yeah and that's important for something like this and this is the biggest money maker and the most important piece of hardware for gm currently they sell the most silverados i mean by far this is where all the money is at for them this platform this platform so they are not fooling around with this so we're going to go over some of the technical parts of it so let's start with the front suspension you now get air ride and magna ride dampers in fact you get three different suspension options or four the municipal vehicles so they're what's called the tactical vehicle program or their police pursuit vehicles get an entirely different suspension setup with passive dampers and coil springs for cost and obviously ease of use to swap out yep your base vehicles get passive dampers and coil springs as well which are tuned differently then you can get coil springs with magneride dampers for the first time i believe the tahoe and suburban now get magneride and then in the higher trim vehicles you get air ride and magneride so there's a lot of added complexity there but the reason they did that we'll talk about in the rear but it mainly has to deal with body control and towing capability and there are some benefits to overall ride refinement when you combine air springs and magneride dampers they have a lot of flexibility in terms of tuning and leveling out suspension for handling given trying to manage all this weight the front are enormous steel control arms there is aluminum in the knuckle design but the shock absorber in the front much like the back the shock runs through the center of the air spring the front has real truck pieces of equipment i was this exclusive on the z71 yes so the z71 package has a exclusive front fascia in fact every single package or trim level of the tahoe and suburban has a different front end look okay this has a unique facial which has real recovery points these two giant red tow hooks in the front a skid plate slightly higher ride height and you get a series of off-road modes and a transfer case so there's a real low range transfer case in this you get a limited slip differential in the rear and you get a off-road plus mode so when you're in low range and you put this into the maximum ride height it will raise even further than if it was in like a regular four-high mode which is limited by speed of course but that's the benefit of having air suspension despite the ex the cost to buy in the cost the repair is way higher for the air springs and their suspension they have to deal with leaky lines and all the maintenance but if you're towing and you're going off-roading there are i mean there's nothing it gives you a lot of flexibility that you wouldn't have with a passive suspension correct let's get to the back and take a look at the rear half all right so mark we made it to the rear of the tahoe and this is where the big story is in irs so what an irs allows you to have or independent rear suspension is better body control ride isolation allows for the vehicle to drive more car like have a more nimble handling vehicle which is what people are expecting in a family hall or something yeah even if it's a truck now people expect it to ride like a traditional suv because suv popularity is kicked up this has to act more like this this allows them the ability and flexibility in tuning and suspension no leaf springs you have coil over design and in this case you don't even have the air springs separated from the shock there's enough room in packaging to do that which gives them way more more design and kinematics you have a traditional multi-link with trailing arm here and when you have a fixed subframe like on a car or an suv it has allowed them to mount the differential into the subframe instead of a live axle design we're in a live axle design because the pumpkin or the rear differential will move around with the suspension undulation you don't have the flexibility required to have a flat load for like you can now in this tahoe correct because your differential moves with the suspension so you have to account accommodate maximum travel which raises the load floor up which this does not have the problem and all the vehicles on this platform generation gets this and this is partly why during the drive we're going to talk about how well it handles and how well it behaves compared to some of the previous generation products you have to keep in perspective with this vehicle it has to do a lot of things that regular suvs don't right there is again the tactical vehicle program there is the police pursuit vehicles so it has to have that built-in modularity day one to accommodate the military the police departments and all the stuff they need to do with this vehicle so the suspension architecture is entirely modular including the electronics architecture inside the cabin then this vehicle has to haul a lot of people and brakes it's got to be something it's got to be all the way from fleet to more hardcore usage all the way up to all the way up to a full-blown luxury car and that's the the cost and development when you get into vehicles like this you have to think about it from the start because you can't go halfway through to at least to make a good vehicle these days it has to be fully thought out ahead of time to do all this and that's the toe on top right which from a suspension design perspective adds a lot of complexity if you're too soft in the rear you don't have the ability to firm up or level the rear ride of this vehicle which the air ride allows it won't be able to tell and this tows keep in perspective as much as a chevy 1500 did in the late 2000s this thing depending on trim level can tow nearly 8 000 pounds and in terms of the frame compared to the silverado version they did change the frame structure near the center half of the car but the front is identical of as the silverado truck you essentially have the same hardpoints for suspension and for the motor correct and let's get into the motor briefly v8 across the entire range yeah other than the diesel so the gas powered offerings this is the volume engine the 5.3 which is in everything and it's been modified now for this generation they went from active fuel management afm to dfm and you also have a 10 speed torque converted automatic correct it's got variable cylinder deactivation to help fuel economy if you're towing and all that and potentially fix some reliability issues you have the 6.2 which is carried over largely from the prior generation produces the same amount of torque as a diesel offering and more horsepower so it should be faster but it's only available in the top trim tahoe and suburban and then you have a diesel six-cylinder variant coming out all right let's take this on the road and see how it drives jack all right [Music] well mark i hope your prostate's all right because there's a lot of tea in this vehicle this is the 2021 chevy tahoe z71 all right oh yeah well i did i thought there'd be a lot more testosterone in this thing but that's not what the z51 is about is it no this this package is about going off-roading is it 51 70. oh okay i always get my numbers mixed up so what are we doing tell me about it so this is an interesting vehicle because it's not something you and i particularly look for right we don't have the need to tow a building because this tells as much as a truck haul seven people and carry the maximum amount of things humanly possible so as a road vehicle as we talked about in the shop there's some inherent compromises we have the 5.3 this is the basically the the volume leader of their engines it's what's in everything and it's as you just felt adequate at least at sea level there's enough guts to move this basically six thousand pound cottage down the road in a effective manner yeah i would agree with that the first time i got into the tahoe i was completely surprised it didn't feel like a gm and i know that's a weird kind of thing to say if you're a chevy person what does that mean it feels far more refined than i expected it's really isolated and quiet it doesn't handle like a boat either i mean it's still a big vehicle but it doesn't give you that tip over effect that you would anticipate with the like you said a cottage on wheels it's surprisingly enjoyable and balanced to drive this yeah i'm genuinely i didn't think i was gonna like it i don't like trucks but this is really competent it's not what i was expecting at all as you mentioned it is great ride isolation so this is air ride and magneride dampers with the z71 trim as equipped and it's really really impressive it has 10 truckishness the rest is feels just like a really refined suv you can hear us in here there's not a ton of echo the sound deadening and damping is great you don't pick up a lot of road noise yes the tires don't have a lot of grip but that's not again this is not what this is about but the body control thanks to the magnetic dampers really finds a good balance between ride quality softness and then it firms up the dampers when they need to to to flatten the ride out and overall that's what surprised me the most is just how livable and enjoyable this really is to driving every day aside from the fact that it feels large yeah this is a big vehicle if you were buying this vehicle over like a minivan or a telluride or some of the other more passenger focused not towing focused suvs uh there are definitely some compromise you need to you you need to actually require its capabilities otherwise you're not the what you're trading off is some of the maneuverability and the fuel economy yeah and you definitely that because of the towing capacity that's the prime one of the primary reasons you would buy this but what they've done in the back half of this is definitely uh more usable than you would anticipate with the captain's chairs in the back and i know you talked about this on the interior part but it does find a great balance between utilitarian like minivan style and that classic truckish suv while still having it feels like this thing has definitely got testosterone infused it's way more masculine than a lot of products are and i know that's what they're going for so that's going to be hit or miss but i know you talked about the fuel economy so this has cylinder deactivation we talked about it in the shop why is it so bad is it just the weight i think it's the mass and the fact that the other day you are still driving a building down the road and yes as we talked about in the shop they did do some things to fix some of the arrow when they went to dfm versus afm and the 10 speed does a good job keeping it a low rpm but there's just so much mass behind this what are you getting average driving this about 14 or 15 and that's combined it shows 13 but that's it yeah it's unfair because this is idling all the time while we're filming it but here let me let me demonstrate the acceleration one more time trans performance is really smooth it's not jerky it it knows they've tuned it to balance it for towing and hauling obviously so you don't have a lot of gear shock it's just a really solid feeling smooth driving experience yeah it's really really refined and again if this is what you're looking for you don't care that you don't get the world's greatest fuel economy you don't care it's not the fastest you are getting a lot of the truckishness that people want in a vehicle like this it's you know again for the price and what it does it is a huge surprise to me and it does not feel like low rent like this was thrown together you could clearly tell there was a lot of development done on interior technology and oh surprisingly underneath there's there's definitely this is a good product for chevy yeah it doesn't feel like a rental car no it's a target basement vehicle anyway i'm really impressed the older tahoes some of the older gm products i think because customer demand is forcing them to pay more attention to this we talked about this with the engineer on the phone people expect more of these they wanted to be a luxury car like experience they wanted to haul in tow they wanted to be a minivan they wanted to off-road so more money is being developed to make this a better experience and i think it's a better truck for because of that really it's pushed them farther i agree so with that mark you want to head in the final thoughts sounds good final thoughts on the chevy tahoe this specs out or this one we're driving is about 68 000. it starts around 50 and ends about at 80 and it doesn't have any real modern competition with the exception of the ford expedition and this has a huge benefit of coming standard with a v8 it does change the driving experience quite a bit and the upcoming diesel clears up some of the biggest deficiencies of this fuel economy yes driving it is fairly normal and if you're in any type of city environment you're going to be getting less than 15 miles to the gallon and if you're towing you're going to be in the low teens so the diesel will fix that for sure but overall interior exterior and build quality appears to be great fit and finish also seems to be pretty good for something like this paint quality looks good panel gaps are average but the interior is where it really shines everything feels really well assembled it's quiet it's refined it drives great and when you add on things like air suspension and magnetic dampers it takes the ride quality from kind of truck to regular suv the road and noise isolation is also great so the lo the noise floor is really low this is something that i would enjoy taking across country and if i had to till a boat or a camp or a small camper or uh one of my two or three la ferraris and mclarens i could easily do that and i wouldn't have to worry about this and you can pack a whole bunch of people in here so thought to design ergonomics interior design is great it's really really impressive for a chevy and i think as we talked about in the drive this has been forced on them people expect more so they're adding more and it's well implemented now the question is with all of this complication how is it going to last well from a new car perspective everything looks shiny and new so we're gonna have to see as this ages over the next three to four years you put over 60 000 miles on how it's going to hold up but that's going to be up to you to do some of that research at this point thanks for watching i'll see you next [Music] time you

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Keywords: cars, trucks, suv, 2020, 2021, review, Chevy Tahoe, Suburban, escalade, lincoln aviator, ford expedition, chevy silverado, ford f150, best, worst, top10, list, best suv, affordable, not reliable, carfax, cargurus, used suv, autotrader, ford explorer, kia telluride, honda, crv, toyota rav4, mazda cx5, hyundai santa fe, Acura, rdx, bmw, x3, x1, luxury, turbo, fun, funny, comedy, tech, android, apple car play, iphone

Id: 3aHx88Ze2RY

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020