2025 Chevrolet Equinox First Drive: Steady as she goes

MINNEAPOLIS – With GM still heavily committed to electrification, the launch of the 2025 Chevrolet Equinox comes at an awkward time. Not to be confused with the battery-powered and mechanically unrelated Equinox EV, the standard Equinox is not only not electric, it’s not even available as a hybrid. With the ranks of ICE-only compact SUVs rapidly shrinking, one wonders how Chevy plans to keep its mainstream people-mover relevant.

Consider this: The Equinox is Chevy’s second-best selling model. If this were just about any other manufacturer, there wouldn’t be a Silverado-sized bogey hogging first place. This is as bread and butter as cars get these days, and with the volumes Equinox enjoys, this isn’t a segment where Chevy can afford to be uncompetitive.

With that in mind, let’s cut to the chase: The 2025 Equinox now looks great inside and out, but apart from interior passenger room, it is objectively lacking compared to virtually everything in its class — and perhaps more glaringly, has stagnated or regressed compared to the 2024 model.

Lest you think me hyperbolic, let me paint you a picture. The 2025 model carries over the 1.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder along with its rated output of 175 horsepower – a figure that was and will continue to be among the lowest in the segment. The six-speed automatic transmission from the 2024 is gone, replaced here by two different transmissions. Front-wheel drive models get a continuously variable transmission, while those equipped with all-wheel drive are paired with GM’s eight-speed automatic.

Torque also differs by drivetrain. While AWD models achieve the same 203 pound-feet of torque as every 2024 Equinox produced,  FWD models are now restricted to just 184 lb-ft. Again, this is the only engine offered in the 2025 Equinox. There’s no hybrid as most others offer (Ford, Toyota, Honda, Kia, Hyundai and soon Mazda and Subaru), no plug-in hybrid (Ford, Toyota, Kia, Hyundai) or even a high-output turbo or other performance upgrade to be found. The Equinox EV exists, but that’s by virtue of marketing and not any sort of mechanical relationship.

This is the part where you probably expect us to let Chevy off the hook for the CVT on the grounds that it’ll be more fuel efficient, but this is perhaps where the Equinox has most significantly regressed. Both the front- and all-wheel-drive variants of the 2025 match their 2024 equivalents for city fuel economy, but fare worse on the highway in the EPA’s test. FWD combined fuel economy is worse, too. You can see a direct comparison of the 2024 and 2025 models in the following table (straight from the EPA’s website).

So that’s the bad news, but there’s at least a truly, genuinely, honestly-to-Godly, new-for-2025 Equinox: the Activ. We can’t help but hear echoes of Bronco Sport in this butched-up compact crossover, but since Chevy has no Bronco equivalent on which to base a rugged runabout (it flushed that opportunity down the toilet with the Blazer), GM’s product folks had to fabricate something on their own. The result is weird, but perhaps in a good way?

Strictly speaking, the Equinox Activ is an appearance package. It gets its own nose (with an admittedly questionable chrome insert), and “Activ” badges and embroidery. Like the Equinox LT, it rides on 17-inch wheels, but rather than a set of Michelin all-seasons, you get some General Grabber A/Ts. Yep, actual all-terrains. Believe it or not, they’re cheaper than the Primacies offered on the LT at the time of publication, so if you spend more up front for the off-roadier Activ, it may at least pay some dividends in maintenance costs.

The 2025 Equinox is 2.5 inches wider, which helps with its far more confident stance, but with that size comes more heft. The base 2WD LT is about 200 pounds heavier than the base 2024 LS (no such model exists for ’25), checking in at 3,428 pounds. The extra width does not, however, translate to more passenger room or a larger rear cargo area. In fact, the latter is a tenth of a cubic foot smaller than the 2024’s, which was already on the small size for the segment.

But let’s stick to the inside, because that’s a much better — but still not perfect — story. The 2024 Equinox’s cabin certainly wasn’t dreary, but new 2025 interior is unquestionably more attractive. The “Maple Sugar” tan and black combo (above) is especially nice to look at. Note that there’s no leather option (which isn’t unusual these days), so these accented pleather and faux suede combos represent the top rung of the Equinox’s interior ladder.

The biggest functional change inside is the relocation of the gear shifter. It’s now a stalk mounted on the steering column, as is fashionable and not necessarily without merit. Moving it there opened up room on the center console — the reason Mercedes did so years ago — but GM oddly filled that vacated space with a gigantic drive mode dial. And speaking of things randomly relocated, the transmission’s “L” mode (itself such a relic that GM didn’t save room for it on the gear selector) is toggled via a conspicuously large and out-of-place button on the steering wheel.

But let’s not dwell on anachronisms when there are futuristic delights to behold. The double-screen setup manages to look fleshed out and cohesive rather than busy and overwrought. Powered by GM’s latest Android-based infotainment software, the system seems reasonably responsive to normal inputs and contrary to widespread expectations, does include both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay integration. Panic not, Jobsians. You needn’t leave your orchard.

We took time to sample all three trim levels of the 2025 Equinox — a front-wheel drive LT, an all-wheel drive RS and an all-wheel drive Activ (yes, you can get it in FWD). The 17-inch wheel and tire packages on the LT and Activ did a much better job soaking up the uneven surfaces of urban Minneapolis, but the knobbier Generals on the latter became audible (though not intrusive) at speed. As for the RS, we’d nudge you toward its standard 19-inch wheels, rather than the available 20s. The Equinox’s comfort-tuned suspension matches up better with the extra sidewall.

Despite being down on torque for 2025, the front-wheel-drive LT will still happily light up the standard Michelin all-seasons if you’re enthusiastic about pulling into traffic. The RS is more composed off the line, while the Activ splits the difference thanks to the A/Ts. You can lean into that a bit more with an AWD RS or Activ model. Stick the drive mode selector in “Off Road” and the Equinox’s nannies will allow more wheelspin before pulling throttle. The engine may not excite, and the lack of an alternative limits the Equinox’s competitiveness, but it does perform as expected.

Suffice it to say, those expectations weren’t high. The lower torque output of the front-wheel drive model is hidden behind the rubber-band effect of the CVT, while the eight-speed fades pleasantly into the background. Keeping the engine on the boil with the CVT in tight merges makes things a bit noisy, but the little 1.5-liter can get it done — perhaps not with the panache of a Honda four-cylinder, but adequately enough. Given that neither variant is a mileage superstar, we’d be inclined to recommend all-wheel drive on spec even if foul-weather fortitude isn’t of much concern to you.

The Equinox is not the sort of car that needs to do any particular thing well. As it goes about the rather mundane mission of conveying its living payload in relative safety and comfort, its primary appeal is its inoffensiveness.  The ride won’t jostle you too much; the acceleration won’t have you reaching for a grab handle. It’s smooth and compliant.

We did, however, note issues with the preinstalled navigation software. During one stretch of our drive, the navigation voice prompts were delayed, coming after we’d thankfully made the correct turn thanks to the screen directions working just fine. Another test group reported a complete crash of the infotainment system during one leg of their drive, forcing them to pull over and restart the car in order to reboot the software. In neither case was the car itself “bricked,” but we wouldn’t call it an amazing look for a car that is already for sale. That said, we experienced no additional anomalies or deficiencies in our two days of driving that aren’t evident from a glance at the Equinox’s spec sheet.

In all fairness, Chevy is not the only automaker whose core compact SUV model is offered with only one engine. There are even some we recommend — including the Mazda CX-50, Subaru Forester and Nissan Rogue. The Mazda and Subaru have hybrids on the way next year, though, and the most we (or anybody at GM, at least publicly) can say about a potential battery-assisted Equinox is that CEO Mary Barra has promised investors that the company will have a new plug-in hybrid on the market by 2027.

Why can’t the company that practically invented the plug-in hybrid come up with one sooner? Well, because it was never supposed to happen at all. In fact, the ICE Equinox was engineered to play second fiddle to the EV. There’s a reason Super Cruise is only available on the battery-powered model, which is already 40% more expensive than the standard Equinox before you add Super Cruise’s requisite Active Safety package. 

If your chief complaint about the outgoing Chevy Equinox was just how insidiously dull it was to look at, the 2025 has you covered. It’s now nice looking inside and out, and its Android infotainment is feature-rich, if a version or two away from being stable. We’d more easily be able to forgive the throwaway drive experience and unremarkable handling if there was something more interesting and competitive going on under the hood, but it seems we’ll have to wait a couple of years for that. In the meantime, the 2025 Equinox is a competent but unengaging commuter.