Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Hummer EV Reveal!”.
This is the new hummer and it’s electric. So after years of rumors leaks and delays, gmc has finally unveiled the hummer truck and it looks like everything that we imagined uh gmc actually sent us some exclusive b-roll of the car in motion. But when you hear the name, hummer ev, it sounds like an oxymoron. Those two things shouldn’t go together on first blush, but the more i thought about it. I think the more it actually makes perfect sense.
So here we are the gmc electric hummer is real and it looks fantastic. It represents everything that the hummer brand stood for, rugged utility, big, bold head-turning design, but also got rid of the negatives out of it. That was the crazy bad fuel economy. Giving what ultimately has turned into an electric supercar in the body of one of the most capable off-road trucks.
So the first thing like looking at this. It is still very clearly a hummer electric or not like it’s identifiable as the hummer brand, but it’s been crazy. Modernized in its top trim, the launch form this truck with 35-inch tires from the factory and all of its gigantic size is capable of going zero to 60 in three seconds. That’S faster than some variants of the porsche 911, that’s faster than even some supercars out there. That is insane for a truck any truck, let alone one that is like that giant and the torque numbers gm is giving out are like just stupid insane uh they’re saying eleven thousand five hundred, and if you follow cars you know that is seems like it would Be an impossible number i’m speculating here. If i would imagine, that’s not like the torque numbers that we’re used to knowing. So regardless it’s a staggering number of pull power, and i guess that makes sense right. It’S got three motors, it’s all-wheel drive. It’S got a thousand horsepower, so that’s all awesome, but there’s still some stuff that are not necessarily raising red flags. But question marks. So gm is saying a range of up to 350 miles. Is that going to be on a full 100 charge? How often is it going to get there under what conditions it’s capable of 350 kilowatt hour fast charging, which is insanely fast, but also? How often are those chargers going to be available? Where are they located? Are they stuck with electrify america chargers? You know there’s still an infrastructure problem if you’re not going to charge your truck at home, so that’s the the drive train but with an electric car, especially a modern car, there’s a lot of other features that you’re going to want to have. So, let’s start with the screens, there’s two of them: the big display.
It’S a 13.4 inch display it’s running android, but it’s being powered by epic’s unreal engine which we’ve seen some demonstration of, and it looks crazy, powerful with obviously really good sort of graphics coming through. So you actually be able to get a lot of information about the car, perhaps best of all over-the-air upgrades and then the screen behind the wheel, the one the driver looks at there’s. Another 12.3 inch screen this one’s powered by qnx, which is a really robust system.
In itself, so that just boils down to very configurable sort of display for you to get the information that you want and show it. However, you want it to be shown, i think when most people think of electric vehicles, at least for me. The first thing i think of is technology, and technology like tesla, has with autopilot gm has their own really robust, capable system called supercruise, and it’s been mostly in cadillac’s. Until now, super cruise 4 is making its way to the hummer ev and it kind of offers hands-free driving. Now the downside is, it has to be on roads that have already been sort of pre-mapped. I haven’t touched the car or seen the car.
I do have some questions about material feel you know, especially with hummers of the past. There was, let’s say, liberal use of hard plastics, so i want to reserve judgments for interior quality until i can take a look and actually see and like touch it for myself. So some things we do know the interior is animal free, so no animals were harmed in making it. The roof can actually come off in four separate panels. If you want that kind of bronco, wrangler style experience, you can store those panels on the go in the frunk and then around the back to the bed. You’Ve got a power tonneau cover which is always awesome to have, and this one i was really happy to see, make its way from other gm trucks. You’Ve got the multi-pro tailgate. It gives you actually six different positions for the tailgate, so the interior at least appears to be like high-end, but this is still very much meant to be an off-road truck. It has adaptive air suspension. You also have armor to sort of make it more capable off-road. You have underbody cameras as well, so you can have a virtual spotter. If you don’t have somebody that can go with you, and perhaps one of the craziest features that i really want to see in person.
Uh they’re calling it crab moon. I’Ve never seen a crab walk, uh kind of walks at an angle. All four tires can turn on a diagonal and the car can move along that plane.
So awesome for off-roading, but i’m kind of picturing use cases for like parallel parking as well. The car doesn’t just go forward and backwards and sort of at different angles, as you turn the wheel to actually go on a diagonal which is bizarrely wonderful. I don’t know how useful it’s going to be, but it’s definitely a new feature in a truck i mean so looking at these specs it just it seems like it’s going to be a really capable off-road truck that can also serve double duty as a work truck Or a daily driver, so that’s the hummer ev, that’s what it’s bringing if, if this is a success, there’ll be other hummer versions that make their way, but at least as its debut it’s bringing a lot to the table.
This is the high mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicle. Also known as humvee, this was designed to do what it looks like to go anywhere, go over everything wherever and whenever it’s needed it was the ultimate military utility vehicle. So how did we get from this to this? Well i’ll be back. This is actually largely thanks to the terminator himself when you saw the humvee in an army convoy while on set of actually kindergarten cop. He fell in love and started a campaign to get the humvee produced for civilians and it worked in 1992. The humvee became the hummer and arnie got his dream.
The hummer is the most outlandish huge fuel-guzzling monster out there, but i still kind of wanted one. It’S incredibly unique and has a presence like nothing else on the road, but, let’s be honest, it was never going to be a mass market car. So when gm bought hummer from am general in 1999, it was clearly time for a change so fast forward to 2002 and enter the h2.
So this gives you the styling cues of the h1, but also like a lot more day-to-day usability and when it was released, was pretty awesome. Everyone knew what it was. It was outlandish, but a lot of owners gravitated towards that and loved it.
It was part of what the h2 was all about. Even still. Let’S just say, the h2 for a lot of people was a little much so entered the h3 in 2005.. So this is the smallest of the hummer vehicles and again it gave you the hummer styling, but now with an even more kind of real world utility and again it sold really well. But as you can guess that didn’t last the biggest issue – and i guess stigma with hummer – was – was fuel economy and for a really good reason. The h2 got a staggering 9 miles per gallon 12 if you’re lucky.
That was fine for the 90s even early 2000s. But in the mid 2000s gas prices shot up as the economy tanked and the hummer as it existed. Just didn’t, make sense anymore and that led to some negativity and the hummer kind of becoming the face of the gas guzzling truck world. And as things tend to go – and they don’t make sense anymore – the brand was discontinued, but just like in the early 2000s, gm has a plan to bring the hummer back.
Sir, the more i thought about it. It seems like this is a brilliant move for general motors, so first in the us, more pickup trucks were sold than passenger cars. Obviously, people in general are interested in trucks of all sizes, and the hummer, as it was initially known, was known for being big, burly sort of being extremely capable. Those same things that made the original hummer line so popular are still here and they’ve been modernized, but the downside of the hummer, the gas mileage thing has not only been addressed, but they’ve now made it supercar speeds. So it’s been over the top for everything, but that same sort of mentality is here just more for 2020 than it was for early 2000s. Gm makes some of the most popular pickup trucks in the world. So the question, at least that i had initially when i thought about this was well. Why not make like an electric sierra that would sort of seem like something people would do for doing with the f-150 think gm is sort of staking their claim to electric truck market without isolating sort of the buyers of you know the sierra or the colorado’s or The other trucks that they make and also, i think, they’re also hedging their bet right. If this doesn’t work, people don’t like a hummer electric truck, the brand didn’t really exist last year. It could go away without really hurting the reputation too much of what gm is kind of all about.
So all of this i mean, i think, sounds like awesome and certainly not going to be for everybody. But if there is one concern that i have – and i imagine you guys will probably have two it’s price. So the first version of this truck the launch edition. It’S called the edition one with all the options it will be available in the later part of 2021 for around 112 000.
So that’s like obviously a lot of money in it like humber itself. It’S clearly not going to be for everybody uh. There are plans to sort of bring in different versions of it that get the price out. Obviously, without some of the options, this should come down to around 80 000, but because of the price we still haven’t gotten the perfect electric truck. In fact, we don’t have any electric truck available right now, but there is an onslaught of them coming and the hummer ev is going to go up against some really tough competition. You’Ve got ford’s f-150 is offering an electric version of it.
Rivien, a new startup is coming out with the r1t around the same time that the hummer h1 is coming out and it’s got more. Traditional truck looks uh. Of course, tesla has their cyber truck offering very similar performance, but a design that i’m just going to say is polarizing. You’Ve got other manufacturers like lordstown workhorse, coming out with these trucks that maybe or may not make it to their market. We’Ve got gm. An established company who has a lot of experience in making trucks. This is a real thing: it’s not a vaporware from a new company. This is a truck that will be on roads and will be available. So, just by that nature, they kind of have a leg up on most of the competition .