Trucks were invented for a reason. When we need a job done right and quickly, there’s no better tool to trust than a pickup truck. This has always been the case, and it’s been accomplished through sheer power and grunt. However, this is only one side of the story nowadays, and trucks are far more than meets the eye. Getting the job done is still the primary focus of a pickup truck, but there are more ways of accomplishing this than ever before. We’re talking about tech, and many manufacturers have begun to implement a host of technology into their pickup trucks to complete these tasks in a manner that keeps up with the times. Today, we’ll be looking at the 2022 GMC Sierra 1500 vs 2022 Ram 1500, and we’ll figure out which truck is the best bang for your buck.
But first, we’d like to take a brief look at the pricing of these two pickup trucks, as this will be an important point of discussion throughout. The pricing of the 2022 Sierra 1500 starts at an MSRP of $32,495. This means that the Sierra 1500 will come in at a lower starting price than the 2022 Ram 1500, which has an MSRP of $34,400. With eight trim levels for the Sierra 1500 and six for the Ram 1500, there’s no shortage of configurations here, and this will, in some ways, affect the available technology that comes with your truck.
Why You’re All Here
Let’s not waste any of your time, you want a pickup truck for a few reasons, but towing is likely one of them. Towing performance is one thing, and easily the most important. However, that’s not the entire story nowadays, as we’ve alluded to earlier. Both the 2022 Sierra 1500 and the 2022 Ram 1500 offer many forms of tech that are built to assist with towing, but which truck does it better? Of course, the potential of a pickup truck shines through its towing prowess, and the Sierra 1500 can indeed tow more with a maximum capacity of 13,200 lbs against the 12,750 lbs of the Ram 1500. With that out of the way, now we can begin discussing towing tech.
Like most new vehicles, a majority of the tech that you’ll find is found within the infotainment center, including the towing tech. The Sierra 1500 and Ram 1500 both do infotainment centers differently. With the Sierra 1500, the infotainment center is a 13.4-inch screen that is displayed in a widescreen view. Alternatively, the 2022 Ram 1500 implements an available 12-inch screen that stands tall within the cabin. Ultimately, the orientation of the screen comes down to preference as both can comfortably display plenty of important information.
Both the Sierra 1500 and Ram 1500 utilize this infotainment center as a viewpoint to display camera feeds. Each vehicle is available with an array of cameras that wrap around it, and these cameras work together to create a range of camera angles that the driver can activate. If you’re towing, these cameras will allow you to check on your trailer at any moment, and you can activate unique views such as a birds-eye view for easy backing up. The Sierra 1500, however, has a transparent trailer camera angle that intelligently combines the camera behind your truck with the one behind your trailer, and its usefulness is apparent.
Being aware of information about your vehicle is rather important, such as tire pressure. This is even more important when dealing with a trailer that brings several additional wheels into the mix. To remedy this, both vehicles offer all of this information to you via the Driver Information Digital Cluster Display. Both implementations are decent enough, but the Sierra easily wins with its 12.3-inch cluster, in addition to an available 15-inch HUD. Because the cluster inside of the Sierra 1500 is so large, it can display all of the gauges you’d normally find here, such as the fuel level, odometer, and speedometer. For the Ram 1500, on the other hand, it’ll display some information, but in a much tighter package.
Any Unique Differences?
There are a few unique differences between these two trucks, namely in how they allow drivers to tow. For example, the Ram 1500 has something called Trailer Reverse Steering Control, and with this feature, the driver can skip using the steering wheel when parking a trailer. Instead, the driver can rotate a knob located under the infotainment center. Turning the knob in a specific direction will inform the truck that it must steer in that direction, and the result is a far easier method for parking your trailer correctly. Although this is a feature that we’d enjoy seeing make its way to the Sierra 1500, GMC also has a feature that’s exclusive to its truck and far more useful.
Within the Sierra 1500, you can get Super Cruise. While we’ve seen this feature in Cadillac models for a few years, this is the first time that it’s available in a GMC and the first time it works when towing. Firstly, what is Super Cruise? Fully hands-free driving. To best explain it, there are over 200,000 miles of road that currently support the feature, and when you’re driving on one of these roads, the lightbar on top of your steering wheel will turn green. When the light is green, this means that you can safely remove your hands from the wheel and your feet from the pedals. Acceleration, braking, and slight turning are all possible while utilizing Super Cruise. With that said, how does it help with towing?
The implementation of Super Cruise on the Sierra 1500 means that you can benefit from hands-free driving even while towing cargo. That’s right; when you’re towing and find yourself on a Super Cruise compatible road, you can still use this feature as intended. Best of all, Super Cruise now supports Automatic Lane Changing, which will safely maneuver your vehicle between lanes to overtake slower cars without any driver input, something that has simply been unheard of up until this point. When using this feature, it feels straight out of science-fiction and is definitely something that Ram will likely consider for themselves in the future.
The Trucks on Track
We’ve more or less reached a point in the automotive industry where the value of your vehicle, such as a pickup truck, isn’t defined solely by the power that it outputs. Nowadays, we expect more from our vehicles, and it becomes abundantly clear when one truck falls short of another. While performance wasn’t the focus of our discussion today, the performance of the Sierra 1500 is still greater than that of the Ram 1500 and at a lower price to boot. Add all of the fantastic trailering technology into the mix, and the Sierra 1500 becomes the ideal choice.
This isn’t to say that the Ram 1500 is a horrible vehicle, far from it. But when you put a much more appealing truck next to it, its value begins to deteriorate. In the here and now, GMC offers a pickup truck that not only costs less than its competitor but also outpaces it in performance and trailering tech. It’s not surprising if we see more than a few Ram enthusiasts make their way over to GMC this time around. To prevent further damage to the Ram 1500’s image, they either need a price drop or to find a way to enhance the overall experience and compete with the Sierra 1500.
