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2020 Chevrolet Silverado Heavy Duty Debuts Online

General Motors has introduced the 2020 Chevrolet Silverado Heady Duty, offering pictures and brief details on the next generation workhorse via a press release rather than rolling out the new truck at a major auto show.

Although the Los Angeles Auto Show is started last week and continues to run through this week, General Motors chose not to introduce the 2020 Chevrolet Silverado HD in the City of Angels. In fact, GM didn’t have any big news in LA, so it comes as an odd surprise that the company issued a press release today with the first pictures and details on the next generation Silverado HD.

It is a curious move for GM to not introduce something is important as a new generation of their heavy duty trucks in Los Angeles, only to roll it out online a few days later. The details are pretty brief, so perhaps GM is ready to talk about the new trucks while not being quite ready to show them off. It seems like the company could have grabbed some attention in LA by offering up a “Silverado HD Concept” that would be little more than the production truck without details, but instead, they thought that it was a better move to skip an auto show debut in favor of a quiet online introduction.

In any case, here is the 2020 Chevrolet Silverado HD and the few available details, including a planned arrival of February 2019.

“We know the needs and priorities of heavy-duty customers are different than those of either light-duty or medium-duty customers,” said Jaclyn McQuaid, chief engineer, Silverado HD. “As such, we built a heavy-duty truck tailor-made for them that has more differentiation than ever before from light-duty models, offers advanced towing technologies to improve towing confidence and includes new features such as the integrated Bedstep, which makes it easier to access the bed while pulling a fifth-wheel trailer.”

2020 Silverado HD Details
While you can base your own opinions on the 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 HD on the image above, here are all of the details that we have on the next gen ¾-ton and 1-ton GM trucks.

The 2020 Silverado HD will be built at the company’s Flint Assembly Plant and while the design language is similar to that of the new 1500, the only shared sheet metal is the roof. Every other exterior piece of the new HD is unique from the lighter duty trucks, helping GM to better differentiate between the two classes of pickups.

“We set out to make a statement with the 2020 Silverado HD and wanted to visually capture the power and capability of the truck,” said Brian Izard, lead exterior designer for Silverado HD. “The result is a truck that looks like a piece of heavy machinery with modern, chiseled finishes and customer-focused details.”

On the inside, the 2020 Silverado HD will offer more legroom and seating positions that should be more comfortable for all riders. We also know that the new Chevy work truck will have plenty of technology, but there is no detail on that.
The 2020 Chevrolet Silverado will be powered by an “all-new gasoline engine with direct injection” that will likely be something from the new LT engine family and that mill will be mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission. The premium engine is the same Duramax turbo diesel V8 that is found in the current Silverado HD, delivering 910 lb-ft of torque with help from a new Allison 10-speed automatic transmission. These drivetrains will lead to “significant increases in towing and payload capabilities”, but there is no mention of any numbers, so we don’t know how much more the new Silverado HD will carry or pull.

Right now, that is everything that we know about the 2020 Chevrolet Silverado HD lineup, but with the trucks expected in mid-2019, it shouldn’t be long before we get the full details. The Detroit auto show seems like a good place for these trucks to show their faces in public, but with GM talking about a February debut, it seems that the Chicago Auto Show will be the host of the formal debut of this new heavy duty truck lineup.