I have to admit, I was a bit surprised when GM announced that it would start its new Ultium battery-powered electric vehicle push with the GMC Hummer EV. It just felt a bit strange. I mean, a Bolt EV redesign is right there, and so is the Silverado EV. Why then, would GM start its oh-so-serious push into modern electric vehicles with the EV version of the truck which — seemingly by fate — ramped its production just as GM was killing off the EV1 program?
Now, the Hummer EV’s EPA documents have been filed (credit to Car and Driver for first reporting on the filings), and they show that the hulking all-electric vehicle stayed really true to the spirit of its gas-guzzling predecessor. Considering its size, weight, and efficiency, the Hummer EV could be described as a vehicle that is, for all intents and purposes, made to be a symbol of excess and consumption. Granted, the documents only reference the Hummer EV’s 1,000-hp, $110,295 Edition 1 version, but the specs are pretty telling.
As per the EPA documents, the Hummer EV Edition 1 is equipped with an Ultium battery pack that has a usable capacity of 212.7 kWh. That’s a huge pack, over twice as large as the batteries on two Tesla Model X Plaid vehicles. It also dwarfs the battery packs used by other all-electric pickup trucks like the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Rivian R1T. Even Rivian’s once-announced 400-mile battery pack, which the company announced several years ago, only featured a planned capacity of 180 kWh.
According to the filings, the Hummer EV Edition 1 would achieve a combined EPA range of 329 miles per charge or a very modest 47 MPGe combined. This is very much in character for a Hummer, of course, but one should not forget that the Rivian R1T received some criticism among the EV community when the R1T received a 70 MPGe rating. Compared to the R1T, which is hardly the most efficient electric vehicle today, the Hummer EV is a flat-out guzzler — it’s just eating up electrons this time around.
A lot of the Hummer EV Edition 1’s inefficiency may likely be due to its weight, which was listed in the EPA documents as a whopping 9,063 pounds. What’s interesting is that a good portion of the vehicle’s curb weight is consumed by its battery pack, which weighs 2,923 pounds. That’s heavier than a whole Toyota 86. This, in a way, makes the Hummer EV a rather interesting vehicle, at least safety-wise. Stopping over 9,000 pounds of metal and batteries after it goes 0-60 mph in just 3 seconds takes is no small task, after all, and one can only hope that GM has extra safeties built within the vehicle to ensure that it’s as safe to operate as possible.
It’s almost ironic, or at least poetic to some degree, to see the Hummer EV become a vehicle that is just as excessive (and wasteful?) as its fossil fuel-powered predecessor. Considering its lack of efficiency and its huge battery pack, one can almost wonder if GM intentionally designed the vehicle to be as unfriendly to the environment as possible. That being said, one almost cannot help but root for the Hummer EV. The Hummer brand, after all, ended up being canceled in the past due to low sales, and a lot of it was due to the vehicles’ bad fuel efficiency.
Hopefully, such will not be the fate of the Hummer EV.
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