The GMC Hummer EV wasn't built for utility. It's a moonshot car, an ambitious purchase that tries to convince internal combustion engines, a fellow truck holdout that future cars can be "badass" too, but this brodozer's steering wheel After a week in his hands, the Hummer EV still feels like a relic from the past. A conscious future that probably shouldn't exist at all.
Let's start with parts that GM thinks are right, at least as "right" as a £9,000 electric truck is available. I prefer the silhouette of his upcoming SUV variant to the body of this pickup his truck, but the Hummer EV looks like a beast in every way. Boxy fender flares occupy almost half of the area on each side. It is impressively large in every dimension. Huge running lights with the word 'HUMMER' engraved on them alert small passing vehicles to their presence before they block the sun. It's very your face. GMC was the first to roll out the largest and most powerful Hummer EV. Two motors on the rear axle combine with one on the front axle to produce 1,000 net horsepower and 1,000 lb-ft of torque. (I'm not a parrot Virtually duplicate use of 5-digit wheel torque numbers by GMC.) The Hummer EV weighs 1.5 times as much as the GMC Sierra Heavy Duty Pickup, but hits 60 mph in about three seconds. This is supercar territory. It doesn't make sense -- and parsing this reality is even harder when you're focused on keeping this rocket-powered aircraft carrier pointed straight -- but something actually makes this happen, especially The fact that it can be repeated is impressive. Another high point for the Hummer EV comes from GM tech, which has been around for some time already. Super Cruise can control the driving, steering, and braking of vehicles on specific pre-mapped highway sections in the United States. This is the best hands-free system on the market today. I feel the same way about the Hummer EV. Even with Brobdingnagian's footsteps, the Super Cruise keeps the car smacking in the center of its lane whether the road is twisty or straight. Lane changes are now automatic and surprisingly smooth. It did an amazing job of making long drives less tedious, and we rarely asked for the system to step in and handle certain parts of the road.I really like the ability to have CarPlay on a portion of the screen while the native app is active.
The rest of the Hummer EV's cabin tech isn't too shabby, either. Rising from the center of the dashboard is his 13.4-inch touchscreen running the latest version of GM's corporate infotainment system. It offers wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, as well as a number of integrated Google apps, including maps. Epic Games' Unreal Engine handles the graphics, and it's pretty good. The display is large enough to offer split-screen features, such as the ability to run Google Maps alongside what smartphone mirroring is running.The 12.3-inch digital gauge display also offers a sleek aesthetic. and can be easily customized using the steering wheel controls. But that's it. These are all new tricks this old dog knows. And when the veneer of physics-defying visceral rearrangement disappears, all that's left is a mediocre electric truck with the curb weight of a dying star.
The entire front of the steering wheel is rubber, which doesn't look very premium.
The Hummer EV's cabin looks very interesting, but beyond a quick glance, it reveals very half-baked content. Yes, we know the Hummer EV is a pickup that turns into an open-air ride (more on the T-top later). Therefore, the cabin must have a certain degree of durability.But man, it all feels that way It's cheapThe dashboard and center console are made of cold, rock-hard plastic that looks like it's been hauled out of a rental Chevrolet Equinox. The use of leather almost stops and starts on the seats and steering wheel. What appears to be leather on the door panels and center armrest is actually a unique rubberized material that has an interesting look but just doesn't live up to the $100,000 price tag. Oh my god, when I open the armrest to access the cabinet, I come across even more hard plastic, bare boltAbout what a Range Rover costs money. yes. Even in its most expensive Edition 1 guise, the Hummer EV feels like a few corners have been cut. There are no lights on the headlights and wiper stalks, and no physical switches to control climate control on the central touchscreen. They weren't included because the GM couldn't get auto-up windows to work due to vertical window issues.
Find a human who can actually comfortably palm this shifter. It looks like GMC accidentally enlarged his CAD diagram of the lever to 125% and forgot to fix it.
The Hummer's cabin also has strange ergonomics at work. The shifter is twice as big as he needs to be, but my admittedly skinny hands still struggle to grip it comfortably. The rear glass is at the perfect angle to keep the infotainment screen in your rearview mirror at night, obstructing your view. Passenger Side His mirror is oddly enlarged, probably because he's two states away from the driver. This makes precise parking and lane changes unnecessarily dangerous. Good ride, but not great. I don't blame you if you think that the mass of an office building and fat off-road tires can absorb everything but an earthquake. The Hummer EV's standard air suspension soaks up pavement unevenness quite well, but the ride quality is poor in execution, as if its inherent performance-oriented stiffness was built in where it shouldn't be. It still feels flimsy inside. These tires also make quite a bit of road noise, but thankfully it's drowned out by the constant hissing of air sneaking through the T-tops and the sound of the wind hitting the windshield and mirrors with steep rakes. Not a quiet car.
The roof panel tint does a good job of keeping the sun at bay, but it can't fix all the wind noise on the highway.
Perhaps GM's greatest achievement in the whole exercise was that the company succeeded in building a wildly inefficient electric vehicle. Its battery allows him to run 329 miles (329 miles) steadily on a single charge, but for that he needs a capacity of more than 200 kilowatt hours. That's about twice as much as most cars with high-capacity batteries. In his week in the Hummer EV, the winter weather did its best to bring the range to its knees. That's just over 1.1 kWh per mile, about one-third the efficiency of the Hyundai Ioniq 5, also tested in cold weather. Luckily, the Hummer EV's Ultium platform means it can handle the fastest charging on offer today. Plug this thing into a 350 kilowatt DC fast charger and it will do its best to charge all the electrons as fast as possible. This is good considering I'm basically charging two "regular" EVs back to back. It's all so wasteful. I just keep thinking about how to use one of these battery packs for other battery packs instead, 2 Equinox or Blazer EV on the road. As most other automakers, including main competitor Ford, are focused on rolling out affordable electric vehicles, necessary is more than I wantGM is throwing two batteries worth of rare metals into a six-figure moonshot here for the chronically unstable.
Branding is so ubiquitous that it seemed very important to the Hummer EV development cycle. But at the same time, how could this vehicle be mistaken for anything other than a Hummer?
What can forgive some of the Hummer EV's warts is that it didn't cost $110,295, including the $1,595 destination charge. And yes, a less equipped, lower-range Hummer EV is slated to come down the pipeline. But my testers are sitting here asking for money for a Range Rover or a Mercedes EQS. That being said, I don't think it's a very good use of money. Hell, for that price he could buy two Ford F-150 Lightning Pro electric trucks. two!
The GMC Hummer EV proves that electrification doesn't change our lives much. Like America's car-buying tradition, there's still room on our roads for unnecessarily large and wasteful things, things that look workable but clearly aren't. Being big and stupid doesn't go into that goodnight gently, even if it probably should.