DRIVEN Heavyweight Hummer EV hits the road
REVITALISING a dead brand isn’t always a good idea, and in the case of Hummer – the big, militaristic marque discontinued by General Motors in 2010 – there will be no conquering of battlefields this time. It’s lifestyle buyers who are being targeted.
Offered as a pick-up (an SUV is coming) the Hummer EV has a loading area, but it’s a short one. The stubby dimensions of the load bay are there entirely to play up to the image of the newcomer’s forebears.
The EV is equipped with a tri-motor electric powertrain – two motors on the rear axle, one on the front – that work together to deliver 986bhp and 1,672Nm of torque. Our first drive is on the wide streets of Los Angeles – the sort of location you could really consider this car’s home territory, perhaps. Rental companies here are already charging $1,500 (£1,260) a day to hire one.
It feels exceptionally wide, but with fourwheel steering it’s actually fairly easy to manoeuvre, provided you keep track of the car’s vast scale. Acceleration is incredible, but bringing things to a halt isn’t as much fun, because the Hummer’s unwieldiness doesn’t allow for relaxed driving at speed.
With a 75 per cent-charged battery available on our test car, we saw a predicted range of 229 miles. A real-world reach of 300 miles seems our best estimate. The battery – a staggering 213kWh in capacity – sits between the axles, and the pack alone weighs just over 1.3 tonnes – a touch more than a basic VW Golf. It’s one of the reasons why the Hummer EV brings gas-guzzling parallels to the EV world, with energy consumption barely beating 1.5 miles/kWh.
It’s also the reason why the Hummer certainly isn’t cheap. In fact, it almost feels like a significant portion of the car’s $110,295 (£94,000) is solely going into covering the cost of that battery. And as a result, cabin quality really suffers. All the removable parts impress in turning the Hummer into a convertible, but the cheap-feeling plastics are a letdown.
“Acceleration is incredible, but its unwieldiness doesn’t allow for relaxed driving at speed”