It's big, it's boxy, and it's got the option of open-air touring. With promotional shots like this, General Motors even impress a guy like me, and I don't care for the original Hummer lineup or electric vehicles.
A couple of weeks before that, I grabbed a drill with full bars showing because I had to take it on the roof. Twenty screws in, and it was stone dead. Don’t get me wrong; these aren’t brand new batteries, not even close. They’ve been cycled lots, handled rough, and operated in extreme heat and cold, just like the battery in an electric vehicle would be bouncing down Saskatchewan highways in four seasons of thermal uncertainty. I think that’s one of the main reasons I can’t trust a fully electric vehicle, the unknown range, reliability, and inconvenience it might provide. A few years in, what does “fully charged” really mean? Sure, wind, cold, and terrain can affect a fossil fuel burning vehicle, but it usually doesn’t catch you off-guard like a battery when it drops dead instantly. We all know somebody with a smartphone that requires them to carry the charging cord at all times because three text messages take the tired old battery down to ten percent. As this electric vehicle fad picks up momentum, I’ve often joked that they could bring back the Hummer and include a trailer full of batteries to power it. Well, General Motors are doing it, with bigger claims than expected and no trailer required.
If there’s one thing I will say, the branding is spot-on, as one glance will tell you that you’re looking at a Hummer. Love it or hate it, it’s not just a re-worked Sierra or Silverado. It’s a Hummer. The low roofline, flat hood, vertical bar grille, big tires, and corners everywhere tell the tale. I actually like the look of it for what it is. Also, the roof panels pop off in a quartet like the t-tops in an old Camaro, likely to compete with the open-air feeling that the Ford Bronco and Jeep Wrangler provide. The mileage claims are pretty incredible, at three-hundred and fifty miles of travel on a full charge. They even go as far as claiming one-hundred miles of travel on just ten minutes of charging. How well does it perform? In an off-road environment, I have no idea, nor do I in a real-world daily street setting, and as I say, I’m an electric skeptic. The numbers, however, are impressive. Zero-to-sixty in three seconds thanks to a trio of electric motors putting out one-thousand horsepower and eleven thousand five hundred-foot-pounds of torque. General Motors’ official website claims a release date of fall of next year for the 2022 model year and a starting price of $112,595 for the first edition, U.S. funds, I assume. You could even reserve one for yourself, and by could, I mean past tense, as reservations are full at the time of me writing this. Other editions will follow annually after that, each lower in price but also lower in performance. I wouldn’t say I like it as much as the new Bronco, but I like it more than the old Hummer, and I’m looking forward to seeing what all that torque can do off-road.
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