It has a bunch of interesting features that showcase the best of GM's engineers. It really is a good flagship. By going for the most machismo vehicle in the line-up, they're helping Tesla destroy any last vestige of electric vehicles as just fancy golf carts. I mean, this was (and in some circles, still is) the popular perception of electric vehicles 17 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcmZ1dof3Qw
(Also, in absolute terms, they get the biggest emissions advantage over a conventional powertrain this way. Convert a Hummer from conventional to electric saves like 1 pound of CO2 per mile driven versus like 0.25 pounds saved per mile for, like, a subcompact car.)
Vehicles like this are super important for helping convince the general public that climate action and electrification of transport doesn't mean diminished capacity and a smaller, more boring future.
I was super impressed by the video GM released on it. I have said skeptical things about past "Tesla killers" and I am very much a Tesla fan, but I only have good things to say about this.
With such a huge battery capacity, it might even be useful for towing, who knows!
My Focus EV 2017 has a lifetime of about 275Wh/mi (and I have a lead foot).
A 200KWh battery could also power a large (e.g. 4br+) house for at least a few days.
it is very much the same scenario that played out with the move to LED lighting, suddenly you can so much more lighting because it cost so little compared to previous lighting.
if anything our next bogeyman may be all the excess heat we generate by increased power usage
It is a low volume production run to the point where this is a boutique novelty car.
Plenty of people see this more as a fun cool toy than some kind of statement of their allegiance to the wanton destruction of all that is good in the world.
Is it a little silly? Sure. It it some kind of thing to make you as mad as you’ve just become? Likely not.
It's tough. It's freaking huge. And it's the only EV that can off-road. Subaru and Jeep are going to be facing extremely tough competition if GM can produce this in any significant volume.
Tesla started out the same way with the Roadster, and that paved the way for the more mainstream models later on. It punched a hole in existing expectations and cleared a path for what was to come.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but it says a lot about GM that what they are doing in 2020 is on the same scale as what Tesla was doing in 2004-2008 with $60 million in funding.
The Hummer EV easily beats any ICE Hummer, as well as it's contemporary ICE peers, on all performance metrics except range.
In fact, the ICE Hummer was such a gas guzzler that even its range was worse than the Hummer EV. With fuel efficiency as low as 9 miles to the gallon, the Hummer H2's 32.0 US gallon fuel tank would have only given it a range of 288 miles compared to the Hummer EV's 350.
Cybertruck came out with a radical design. The Hummer EV looks tame in comparison. There's also the new Ford Bronco that feels like it's in the same category (unique, off-road capable vehicles) and a few other truck platforms coming out.
To me, it feels a bit like the modern-retro muscle cars of the late 00's. Challenger, Charger, and Camaro all coming out in a similar timeframe generated hype about the category. I don't think any of those cars would be as successful without they're competitors.
A lot of people enjoy living in far places away from communities. I think that’s my perfect retirement scenario honestly.
The enormous externalities of supporting that lifestyle, whose costs are frequently borne in the form of municipal debt, climate devastation, and by (in net, when everyone demands this and fills in-demand areas with widely spaced housing) reducing the available housing stock.
Also, I do not understand how someone living further away from a city reduces the housing in a city.
Living semi-off grid and with a low environmental impact is possible, but it demands deliberate choices and trade-offs.
Can you offroad in a model 3? What lift kit do I need to install to fit 40" tires? What's the departure angle? Approach angle?
Apples and oranges, but this is probably beyond the scope of HN. I doubt we have many other people here who are into offroading.
I'm super excited for electric off road vehicles, but when you're way out there you really still need a gasoline engine. It's just too convenient to store 100+ miles of fuel in ~60lbs strapped to the back of your truck, your friends truck, and every other person's truck who you meet on the trail. On a longer trip it's easy to be a day or more from fuel (because the roads are bad, and average speed is very low)
Torque from 0 and independent control of each motor is going to be a game changer. Add in new suspension possibilities when you don't have differentials and axles (hub motors?) and next-gen trucks could be extremely capable. If we can figure out the range/refueling problem (...and I don't think we can for 10+ more years for this use-case)
I think folks are getting confused about 'off road' in the comments here. Image search '4x4 rock climbing' - that's the stuff many trails have short (or long) sections of. Add in the isolation, constant use of aircon or heat (or both), high power demands to go very short distances, and electric just won't do it right now. We need better batteries or some way of producing electricity from liquid fuels.
If Chrysler made an electric Wrangler or Ford an electric Raptor, now that'd be interesting.
FWIW the model 3 is better than one would expect off road since there's a lot less stuff to worry about on the underside (no oil pan, for example).
It's appealing to me.
The ICE Hummer was at least 3X less efficient than the Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys of its era.
I'd say it actually reflects pretty well on the Hummer if it's only uses 2.25x more energy than the Model 3, which is known to be very well optimized and highly aerodynamic.
Pretty much all highway-legal vehicles with strong offroad capabilities are less efficient than their non-offload-capable counterparts. (See, pretty much every Jeep ever; the Toyota offroad versions of their trucks and SUVs vs the standard models.)
The difference is, I'm guessing the Sedan can't pull my 9,000lb trailer very well.
The marketing brand for Hummers is girth and power, male sexual machismo in car form, and that isn't changing at all. Nobody evaluates their proxy phallus in terms of fuel consumption. They do it in terms of manly things like horsepower, towing capacity, and taking up a lot of space so that the whole world notices you. Electric vehicle marketing has been all over the "MOAR POWAR!" angle from the very beginning. There's zero reason for a car to accelerate to 60MPH in 3 seconds, but here we are with every electric tank advertising that it flies like a bullet.
For an electric motor driven by batteries, the primary cost of a high power system is the ability to push lots of current to the motor. The motor itself is relatively cheap.
Any electric car that has the ability to charge quickly also has the ability to discharge quickly, to deliver lots of power to the motor.
Fast-charging is the cake, insane 0-60 times are the icing.
I'd be interested in Sandy Munro's take (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj--iMtToRO_cGG_fpmP5XQ)
When Tesla first started to gain traction people talked about them like they were a company that wanted to save the world. People talked about EVs like driving one was an altruistic endeavor for the future of mankind.
Now if someone as, like you said, individualistically isolationist as an EV Hummer can sellout then that's a sign the narrative around EV are changing as they become more mainstream.
The only time I think IC vehicles are useful are for the power density of gas, which should just be super-long trips with no infra.
As for the original H1 it turned out to be a fine vehicle for the "Green Zone" but did not sufficient force protection for today's urban warrior.
wait until eM1 Abrams. With additional benefit of improved IR signature.
Cybertruck is larger again at 5,885 mm, but that may differ for the production version.
Vs. creating a rendered biomass pipeline to feed an extremely fiddly engine with hundreds of moving bits and bobs?
The fiddly engine's moving bits and bobs will degrade with use, so it should be possible to pull replacements from disused alternatives.
If The Shit Hits The Fan for reals, you can just plug in any power source to an electric motor and make it go. Adjusting power can be done with really simple electronic connections. Just an on/off switch will do in a pinch.
Good luck trying to find a head gasket for a certain model of ICE though =)
These ones do. You're probably thinking of brushed motors, like the kind you can buy at Radio Shack as "hobby motors". EVs typically run brushless or induction motors, which require sensors and electronics to time the power to each coil.
"isolationist individualism" - is that something bad or good? Sounds like description of pretty large number of people working in IT (typically called "nerds").
So, at least part of that isn't too radically different from the politics a large number of folks working in IT profess.
Compare and contrast to the Volvo brand, and marketing, which sends all of the signals you're looking for ... and can barely be bothered to enter the electric car market.
It's basically 2021 and what they have to show is an iMobile or eCar "mobility" initiative (Polestar 2) which is barely more than a concept car.
If corporate image manipulation had any basis in reality, we'd have a plain old Volvo V90 electric car by now, based on about 6-8 years of platform development at "the good car company". (I would buy this car, by the way)
Instead, I think Volvo and Hummer are both just carmakers and they will behave the way incumbent carmakers behave.
WHAT?
Volvo is I think the only traditional car producer that sells absolutely no ICE-only vehicles (all of them are at the very least "mild hybrid"). Its declared goal is to be electric-only, and they certainly seem to be making good progress on that. Sure, they're not Tesla, but I think it's unfair to compare them with Hummer.
[edit] here are their (public) goals: https://www.volvocars.com/intl/why-volvo/human-innovation/el...
- Since 2019, all cars electrified, all cars available in "plug in hybrid" version
- 2020, launch full electric vehicles (they did, XC40)
- Their goal is 50% plugin hybrid, 50% full electric by 2025
This is the same company that released the seat belt patent to public domain[1], just to make stuff safer for everyone.
[1]https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-patent-issue...
Volvo and their inability to commit to electric (and all of the marketing and advertising to the contrary) is a master class in the reality of incumbent ICE manufacturers. It also shows how much of the volvo branding and market segment is just bullshit.
"Their goal is 50% plugin hybrid, 50% full electric by 2025"
Yes, we all saw those press releases but the reality is the actual volvo cars (V60, V90, XC90, S60, S80) will be the hybrids[1] and the space-tron eMobility iDrive ecoTrans "initiative" cars will be the electric ones.
Show me an actual volvo (not a space-tron concept car and not their little XC40 golf cart) that is electric and I will happily recant (and go purchase one).
[1] With tiny, loud, high vibration lawnmower engines mated to turbos and blowers.
Hybrids may not be perfect, but they're better than the alternative of ICE-only vehicles, and the sale of hybrid consumer vehicles has done wonderful things for air quality in CA (wildfires notwithstanding).
True, all cars pollute, but EVs pollute their environment less.
>Also gray energy emission (embodied energy) is completely ignore as allays. If we compare average emission per mileage per car over the whole lifetime EVs are just as bad as any other car.
For one, I'm pretty sure that CO2 emissions per lifetime of EV is significantly less than ICE although it is absolutely not zero, that's true. But point two: Containing emissions from a factory is much simpler than containing emssions from a million cars driving around.
>The only way to change that is if cars stop being parked 99% of their lifetime. Environmentally the worst thing for a car to do is not being in use. It means more cars are build than work is there for them.
True, personal vehicles are rather wasteful but it is definitely worse for the environment to drive an ICE than to not drive it.
>Thats how we actually waste resources and pollute completely unnecessary.
I agree, cars should be taxed a lot at purchase and their usage billed (with road usage taxes for instance).
That sounds totally outside the realm of reason. Please do cite some third-party sources.
Depending on the way a country produces most of its electricity, EVs will outperform ICEs in emissions in just a few years. And that's mostly ignoring the emissions from drilling oil, refining it to petrol and moving said petrol to stations.
And to all the people commenting below. It doesn't even matter if EVs are better. Even if they have half the emission to a normal car. Reusing a existing car is almost certainly still better. Also no one really know what the lifespan of any modern car is. If you assume cars follow the trend of anything else then EVs will probably be obsolete after 5 years by the time we have 50% EVs on the road. Building a car EV or not that last 10, 15 even 20 years outperforms in emission. Also my main point was that humanity should reduce cars that aren't moving that would reduce pointless emission.
You do know that the car industry only uses a fraction of a fraction of all electric motors created, right? And the stuff dug out of the ground doesn't mystically disappear, it can still be recycled.
Coal and oil will actually just go poof when it's used. It can never be used again.
You had me up to this point. EVs are certainly responsible for some emissions.
But ICE cars share all the "Emissions" you mention (Tire rubber dust/oil/windshield wiper fluid etc.), plus the massive emissions of just burning gasoline increasingly inefficiently over the lifespan of the vehicle. Plus wasteful oil leaks and just oil burning over the life of the vehicle; the environmental cost of shipping oil and gasoline all over the planet; the environmental damage from massive oil spills and small gasoline spills from everyday fill-ups; transmission fluids, the list goes on and on.
EVs aren't perfect in terms of the environment, they aren't even great, but they are a metric ton better than ICE vehicles.
On the other hand, I can't imagine their prev base of the flamboyantly anti-liberal is going to be excited about an EV either. So are all their new buyers those sheepish in-the-middle people who don't care that much about the gross brand and always wanted to buy a Hummer themselves but were too embarrassed?? Seems like an odd niche to focus on.
Anyway I'm confused about the marketability of this product unless they openly disavow and almost apologize for their previously brazen/gas guzzling/tree-hating positioning. That they've sold out the first year means nothing without knowing the volumes involved. My gut tells me this isn't actually going to be a big seller and unlike you I don't imagine their intentions are laudable. More likely this is a callous and misguided resurrection of a dead and vile brand and they aren't even thinking about that history and their culpability in perpetuating the associated culture.
This might be off-topic and I don't mean to come across as confrontational, I would like to ask: I've read this as a reason to own a truck many times and, assuming you don't have something like a farm, I'm very interested to know what it is you're hauling on the regular?
I've owned property three times in my life, twice in Texas (where there's no shortage of trucks) and have never owned a truck. All three properties have been single-family detached structures with yards, once with a pool, the works. The few times I needed to bring something home my regular sedan couldn't handle, I rented a truck for a couple of hours or a day.
Full disclosure: I loathed driving the things, too. Pedestrians were virtually impossible to see, a staggering number of blind spots, felt like it took an entire county to bring the thing to a stop, and one refueling of the rental was about what I spent on a month of gas for my usual vehicle.
I also don't currently own a truck, but a small sedan so all of these recent things I had to wait/pay for delivery, borrow a truck, or depend on rentals so I'm familiar with "truckless" lifestyle and can say I would prefer at the least a beater truck for these tasks, at which point trading my current car would come out equal to a standard truck in that scenario.
For example, I've been looking at appliances, and occasionally see nice appliances on sale on craigslist or the like... these would be dead simple to pick up if I had a truck, but I'm a small car kind of person.
Similarly, I've been putting off a Home Depot trip to buy lumber for a project because I would need to get the plywood cut down pretty small to fit in my car, and I can't be bothered to rent a truck.
A good way to solve this issue is a small car with a trailer. Even the smallest trailers available here (750kg gross weight) are plenty to haul home any appliance or piece of furniture.
And the trailer doesn't impact your fuel budget when you're not using it.
More important for city living, the trailer doesn't make the vehicle fundamentally more difficult to parallel park in a tight spot.
This EV Hummer looks awesome. I think their timeline to delivering is VERY optimistic and their tech will lag behind Tesla in every single way. I have a deposit on a Tesla Cybertruck and will be keeping that.
An electric Hummer counters that brand signaling in unexpected and, for me, surprisingly welcome ways. Converting a large gallons-to-the-mile ICE to an emissions-free electric drive train shows a willingness to cannibalize a previously successful marketing brand with a more responsible offering.
Ideally, the EV Hummer would offer comparable or better performance than the ICE, though achieving such will likely take further research and investment.
Such manufacturing and marketing moves, though late in coming, are laudable and I sincerely hope such companies blow through their wildest sales projections in the EV market.