Hummer EV Pickup

Make
GMC
Segment
Sports Car

Voltage Vulture, Battery Blaster, and Charge Hog. Those are a few of the names we gave the 2022 GMC Hummer EV Pickup in an attempt to describe its terrible efficiency, at least for an electric vehicle. Capable of only 47 MPGe combined, the problem is the Hummer's immense weight of over 9,000 pounds. Perhaps to assure prospective customers that the truck's heft isn't an issue, GMC has just released a new documentary called Revolution which includes countless scenes of the Hummer EV being aggressively manhandled in the wild. Besides showing off its drifting capabilities and delving deeper into the engineering team's goals, they also performed a few epic jumps, not something you'd expect to see in a vehicle of this weight.

The entertaining documentary is a full hour long, so if you want to skip to the jump, the action starts at the 34-minute mark. It's hard not to cringe as you watch and listen to over 9,000 lbs of metal and plastic landing with force, but the Hummer appears to have pulled off a move more commonly associated with the Ford F-150 Raptor.

"Truck did really well," said one of the testers. "Trying to jump the truck, trying to get some air, really checking for our torque and safety monitors, got good data on it. Nothing broke, nothing's leaking. As far as I know, all the parts are still on."

Well, that's comforting, although GMC wisely advises any potential owners not to try the same thing.

At an earlier point in the video, the Hummer is taken out on the snow to execute maneuvers like sudden lane changes at high speeds as the development and fine-tuning of the pickup continued. Even early on, the monster EV impressed with its agility and minimal body roll. One tester described drifting the truck across the ice as "uneventful" simply because the Hummer was so composed. Later, the truck is put through its paces along an extreme rock-crawling course where the Crab Mode came into play. At some point, the course is so challenging that a tie rod was bent.

All in all, the film is a fascinatingly in-depth look at the development and fine-tuning of a wildly polarizing pickup. On the one hand, EVs are supposed to be about eco-friendly efficiency, but how green can a 9,000-pound truck actually be? On the other hand, the Hummer's ability to hit 60 mph in around three seconds and perform as it does despite its heft is quite a feat of engineering. By the end of 2023, GM wants to deliver 400,000 EVs in North America - we wouldn't bet against the Hummer EV contributing significantly to that goal.