I have two confessions to make. One is that I always got a kick out of driving the Hummer H1 and H2, especially off-road, in spite of myself and everything for which the brand has been reviled. The second is that I’m struggling to make sense of the 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup truck at this point in history — both broader history and GM’s history. But we can examine that after discussing what it was like to drive the Goliath of plug-ins, which my colleague Kelsey Mays and I did briefly in Ann Arbor, Mich., recently as jurors for the interpublication North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year awards.
Related: 3 Things to Know About the 2022 GMC Hummer EV Pickup Truck
The Hummer EV pickup, which GMC says will be sold before the end of 2021 in its Edition 1 trim level, is massive. It recalls the Hummer H2 SUT, last sold as a 2009, yet is larger still — almost 5.5 inches wider and 27 inches longer, at 216.8 inches. For a more modern comparison, a 2021 GMC Sierra 1500 crew-cab pickup is roughly the same width as the old H2 but measures 231.9 inches long with a short bed or 241.5 inches in the standard bed. The Hummer is still more than a foot shorter but considerably wider.
The upside of this full-size Hummer is a more functional cargo bed, measuring 5 feet long and extendable to 6 feet, 10 inches with the nifty MultiPro Tailgate lowered. (That compares to many half-ton crew-cab pickups, where beds typically measure 5.5 to 6.5 feet.) This addresses complaints about the H2 SUT, but being a pickup wasn’t the main objective of that Hummer, or this one. No, all you haters, its main objective is not to offend; it’s to be a no-excuses off-road vehicle.
Quick, Comfortable
Unfortunately, our drives were exclusively on pavement. (An invitation from GMC to experience development mules in their natural habitat in September was received, but scheduling conflicts kept us from taking advantage.) Still, we got a good feel for what the Hummer is about and what it can do.
I admit being jaded about electric acceleration, but if the new Rivian R1T opened my eyes with its 3-second 0-60 mph time, it was even more surprising in such a big, blocky truck like the Hummer EV. Powertrain ratings like the Hummer’s 1,000 horsepower don’t really faze me because EVs are usually disproportionately heavy due to their battery weight, and the bigger they are, the bigger and heavier their packs must be. But the Hummer had me wondering if this is what young people mean when they use the word “stupid” where I wouldn’t expect it, because the Hummer EV is stupid quick — as in, it might indeed be stupid for it to be this quick. It keeps on pulling at 70 mph, too, where lesser EVs peter out.
Among the many adjustable features are the standard air springs and adaptive shock absorbers, which are tied to the Hummer’s driving modes. Not MagneRide dampers, these are conventional variable-orifice adaptive shocks based on those from GMC’s Sierra Denali. The ride is a touch floaty but quite comfortable on pavement.
The Hummer’s left steering-wheel paddle increases regenerative braking, but only momentarily (like a handbrake), as in the Chevrolet Bolt EV, which I always found peculiar. The better way to do it is by selecting the high setting on the touchscreen for one-pedal driving, which activates and sustains a more aggressive regenerative braking mode.
Removable Roof
Once in motion, the Hummer was reasonably quiet but for the aggressive off-road tires and considerable wind noise from the Sky Panels, GMC’s name for the removable glass “infinity roof” sections, which can be stored in stacked holders in the large front trunk (the foam holders pictured aren’t the final product). Aaron Pfau, the truck’s lead development engineer who rode shotgun on my drive, said the wind noise had been addressed in preproduction vehicles currently being assembled at GM’s Factory Zero, formerly Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center. (The loaded truck we drove, worth roughly $112,000, was a prototype running preproduction software.) Though the roof looks like a T-top, Pfau said the center beam over the front seat can be unbolted for a fully open-air experience. The rear window rolls down, as well.
One downside to the removable roof sections, which eliminate any overhead structure between the A-, B- and C-pillars, is that the Hummer lacks side curtain airbags, though officials told us it does have seat-mounted bags for both rows. Third-party crash-test results remain pending, but the lack of curtains raises the risk of occupant ejection, particularly during a rollover. The Hummer isn’t the only SUV or pickup truck to lack curtains; the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator do, too. Federal safety standards all but require them but for a few exempted vehicle configurations, under which the Hummer doubtless qualifies.
Controls Done Right
When I heard GMC had tapped Perception, a company behind some Marvel film interfaces, to work on the graphics for the Hummer’s exclusive 12.3-inch digital instrument panel and 13.4-inch touchscreen, I was concerned. Some past GM touchscreen icons have been so stylized and animated that they weren’t recognizable compared with the relatively simple, flat Ford Sync equivalents of the time, which one could recognize and press instantly while driving. But the artwork — and it is artwork — in the Hummer manages to look like something from one of Iron Man’s head-up displays and still be perfectly understandable. It’s fantastic, and it’s driven by Epic’s Unreal Engine gaming software and a processor that seems powerful enough for the task.
Perhaps more important, any control that’s not on the touchscreen — you know, like a button — is a real, mechanical button rather than a touch-sensitive panel. Specifically, the touchscreen is supplemented by a row of piano-style hard keys directly below it that got some good user-interface attention, such that pressing one of the heated-seat control keys activates options above the adjacent keys. If a control has to activate another layer, this is a good way to do it.
At Home on the Range …
It’s off-road where the suspension’s air springs really pay off, with adjustable ride height as high as 15.9 inches, with 4 of those inches coming from the optional Extract Mode compared with Terrain Mode. But the Hummer EV has more exclusive features than this.
The truck’s longer length might make for a more usable truck bed, but the downside is a less maneuverable vehicle … or is it? The inclusion of four-wheel steering allows the Hummer to turn a tighter circle than you’d think possible, and even tighter when the vehicle’s in Terrain mode (37.1 feet, as much as 7.2 feet tighter than with two-wheel steering), which is intended for low-speed rock crawling. That’s right, the son of Quadrasteer — which I appreciated so much in a Sierra Denali nearly 20 years ago (but buyers apparently didn’t) — has come home to GMC. The same system is what allows it to crab-walk sideways, or technically at a sharp angle when driving forward. In off-road scenarios, these provisions can pay off, especially for a vehicle even wider than the old H2, which I recall was trickier to navigate off-road than the Jeep Wranglers, Toyota 4Runners and other models of that era.
I’m only beginning to appreciate how well electric propulsion and off-roading go together, having recently driven a 2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid through a forest trail in electric mode. The exceptional torque of electric traction motors allows them to scramble over obstacles seemingly effortlessly, accentuated by silent operation that allows you to sneak up on wildlife. The Hummer EV has one drive motor for the front axle with an electronically locking differential, plus two additional motors on the rear axle. Back there, mechanical locking is unnecessary, as separate motors can either sync or distribute torque more precisely than a clutch-based differential ever could.
Pfau said the development team made changes to the Hummer EV based on its own off-road experiences, such as minimizing interior noise (like the synthesized drivetrain sound) when in Terrain mode so you can hear the rocks you’re sliding over. The truck also has 18 camera views that include perspectives underneath the vehicle and all inner- and outer-tire sidewalls, arguably the most vulnerable underbody elements of an otherwise fortified vehicle. Between this feature and the 35-inch Wrangler Territory tires designed specifically for the Hummer by Goodyear, GMC says no tire damage has occurred during extensive off-road development.
… With Range to Get Home
The Hummer EV is the first vehicle with GM’s new Ultium drive system, for which full details are elusive, but GMC says the Hummer EV will have between 300 and 350 miles of range on a full charge. The maximum AC charging rate with a Level 2 charger is 11.5 kilowatts, meaning you’d want an electric vehicle service equipment unit rated at 48 amps on a dedicated 60-amp circuit. At a 350-kilowatt public DC fast charger, the Hummer can add as much as 100 miles in 10 minutes, GMC says, but home charging rates weren’t available as of publication. Just scratching the surface of the new Ultium battery pack and its execution, the Hummer actually has a 400-volt native drive system. Internal switching changes the wiring between two 400-volt battery banks from parallel to series, which readies the pack for 800-volt, 350-kW DC fast charging.
Also impressive: Two GMC representatives on-site told me they had witnessed the Hummer EV actually charging at just under 350 kW (346 kW at an 18% state of charge, to be exact), or the DC charger’s limit. Though EV manufacturers often cite high maximum charging rates, their vehicles seldom come close to those rates, let alone the highest level currently available.
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Knowing that sometimes these shortfalls are the fault of the charger, not their own vehicle, Pfau said, GMC will add messaging to the Hummer’s system to inform owners when lower charging rates are the fault of the charger versus the vehicle. It will offer similar tips for home charging.
“If you’re sitting in the truck, we’ll pop up a message that says, ‘You’ll get better charging if you turn your [climate controls] off,’” Pfau said. “A goal of this truck is to excite people that wouldn’t normally be looking at an EV. With that, we think educating them with some of these nuances will help that experience.”
Bad Timing?
There’s a lot of excellent thinking in the GMC Hummer EV, from its 800-volt-when-you-need-it battery pack to its many off-road provisions, but the timing seems unfortunate. There’s more attention than ever on EVs, with a proliferation of affordable examples available in all 50 states, not just the handful with stricter environmental requirements. The Hummer EV is arguably a niche vehicle — an expensive showcase for off-road technology, and in truck rather than SUV form (which is also coming, for 2024), possibly because there’s a race underway for electric pickups.
Consumers remain uninformed, and at times clueless, about EVs. GM has been in this game long enough to be the only manufacturer apart from Tesla to have eliminated its allotment of federal tax credits, but reminding people of the Chevrolet Bolt EV or EUV only brings up the fact that their batteries are under recall due to fire risk. To the uninitiated, it looks like GM’s EV options are an expensive niche vehicle or a fire risk. The GMC Hummer EV is an impressive piece of work with unfortunate timing.
Editor’s note: This story was updated Nov. 1, 2021, to clarify the nature of Epic’s Unreal Engine.
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