That’s right – the king of gas guzzlers has gone green. GMC executives unveiled the new Hummer electric bakkie in an online only event. It is the first Hummer bakkie, but more obviously its first electric vehicle and also the first car to be launched in more than a decade.
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It is called the Hummer EV Edition 1, which the company calls “the world’s first all-electric supertruck.” It is a double cab bakkie with all-wheel drive and 1,000 horsepower from its electric powertrain. It has a claimed 0-100km/h sprint time of under three seconds and a range of more than 550km.
It will offer batteries as large as 200 kWh, double the size of the top of the range Tesla Model S. It uses a unique battery architecture, called Ultium batteries, which was unveiled by GMC back I March. They can stack internal cells either vertically or horizontally within the battery pack, which gives the engineers more flexibility when designing it to fit into specific areas of the vehicle.
The Hummer electric bakkie offers a feature called Crab Mode. It tilts both the front and rear wheels and rotates them at the same angle and speed so that the vehicle moves diagonally (hence the name). It is meant to make parking as easy as possible because this is a massive vehicle.
It will come with a plethora of off-road features, as you would expect. It has adaptive air suspension which can jack up the ground clearance by as much as 4 inches. We have no official word on max ground clearance but given that the Hummer has 35-inch wheels, we would venture a guess and say its top-of-class. The underside of the vehicle is armour-plated in order to protect the batteries from any potential knocks.
It is a bold new direction for the brand, and it remains to be seen if the environmentally conscious take to its bulk and heritage.
