Just like the rest of you lovely Autopians, I’m a car guy, and I’m definitely not just saying that because I’d be promptly fired if it came out I’m an atheist in the church of combustion and am obsessed with meaningful public transit. The engineering is rad, as is the mastery of the driving craft and the fact that there’s such a wide breadth of cars to fulfill any need you have. Proof to that point, I have two incredible cars that are on totally different ends of the spectrum: an overpowered C6 Corvette and an ’04 Wrangler sitting pretty on some 33s, and I have a burning desire to buy a 40-year-old truck simply because I think they’re just sooo pretty.

The reality, though, is that those are all some severe gas guzzlers. I’m pretty certain the Jeep is lucky to clock in eight miles on a milk jug’s worth of gas, and I don’t even wanna imagine how an old truck scores on fuel economy. Surprisingly, the C6 is not only an incredible smiles per gallon kind of machine, it also does shockingly well with miles per gallon (especially on the highway). Its only flaw is that it’s a two-seater, so I’m limited in terms of maximizing how many people I can carpool with, and its first couple gears are so torqued up that said efficiency gets thrown out the window if I’m driving it like I stole it.

With the insane amount of commuting we do in the city of Angels, I’ve started to think more seriously about the economic and environmental impact of the guzzoline, and even passively considered an EV – but I’ve never driven one! That was, until the Hummer EV SUV came into my life.

The Spec Sheet

Year and Trim: 2025 Hummer EV SUV 2X
Engine: Dual Motor Configuration
Transmission: Electric Zooooooooom
Drivetrain: Four-Wheel Drive
Output: 570 horsepower, 7,400 lb.-ft. of torque
Fuel economy: 59 MPGe city and 46 MPGe highway, 53 Combined, 315 miles of range.
Price as spec’d: $90,245

If there were a car that could be described as /fæt/, it would be this. “Griffin! Griffin! What the hell ancient spirits are you conjuring with that word you just typed there?” Glad you asked! That’s the phonetic spelling of the word “fat,” sometimes spelled as “phat” when speaking in African American Vernacular English (also known as “ebonics,” which I majored in for undergrad, thank you very much).

I’m using the phonetic here because it’s both capital F and capital P /fæt/, and well worth acknowledging both sides of that coin. Sitting still, you’re hard pressed to find it properly seated in the middle of a parking spot, but it’s also got an aura that calls to me like Mjolnir or seven beers after any minor inconvenience in my life. I’m drawn to it. I found myself walking towards this vehicular kaiju much like a mountaineer approaching Everest, as having the megalith submit to my will is equally as daunting as the hike up the world’s tallest mountain, and I don’t even need a sherpa for the Hummer.

While the truck variant of the Hummer is dangerously close to becoming a commercial vehicle due to its weight  (a hearty 9,640 pounds), the SUV manages to shave a full half ton off of its big boned body, although I’m confident you wouldn’t actually feel much of a difference between the two’s driving dynamics.

Styling: The Good

One of the first things you notice on the snow white beast (okay, “Interstellar White” is the official name) is its grill. It rocks a smile not too dissimilar from that rat bastard slimeball Randall Boggs, who’s coming to attack your young human friend, and it has the Hummer name inlayed in the headlights with fun  H-shaped lights to flank it. To continue the Hummer’s “H” facade, the runner board that lines the floor underneath the door has a silhouette of the front fascia.

To balance the Hummer’s large stature, it’s rocking massive 35-inch AT tires that would certainly look huge on most cars, but I think they serve the bulky body quite well here. Just for kicks and giggles, though, I would love to see someone put tiny road car tires on the Hummer. Surely it would look totally normal, right?

To build on the outdoorsy feel of a chunky AT tire, the floors (and speakers!) have a design that looks like a topographic map, although I really can’t imagine many people would actually take this on a trail if for no other reason than it would get pinstriped to hell for being two dirt roads wide.

Continuing on the pluses, I’m confident in saying this is the best roof I’ve ever experienced. It’s spec’d with the “infinity roof with transparent sky panels” that gives the follically challenged sun protection for their noggins, but also allows you to see out the top like a convertible. At the same time, the panels are removable and store in the front, so if you do wanna risk the precious crow’s nest and feel the wind blowing over your scalp, that’s possible too!

If you’re hauling lumber or copious amounts of groceries for your local potluck, the frunk and trunk can fully open for you at a double-press and hold of the fob, and the trunk has buttons in the rear that will immediately fold the backseats flat. I just don’t recommend doing it with anything you don’t want smooshed sitting there, because it’s gonna get smooshed.

The front seats are comfy, the Bose 14-speaker system sounded great (I always like to test with the bass-heavy and bouncy “Impalas & Hydraulics” by REASON ft. The Game), and the center console combines some nice styling with a lot of space ready for storing all your goodies, like spare cameras in my case.

Styling: the Bad

Remember that super-spacious center console I talked about a while back? Felt like a lifetime ago. Why’s it so spacious? Because this car is too frickin’ big, man. I’m sure if I wanted to, I could comfortably fit my entire massive camera bag on top of the console or in the faux transmission tunnel. I swear this dash feels as wide as a football field is long. If you want me to summarize this section in one word, it’s literally all just size. To enumerate:

There’s a button that rolls down all windows at once, including the rear tailgate window, like a 4Runner. Rad! The button to roll it up is not next to the one to roll down; it’s above the center rear view mirror, which is over an arm’s length away on the roof. Using it required me to actively hunt for several minutes and fully look away from the road to locate and use it. Not rad.

On top of that, the car is so wide that I’m required to fully turn my head no less than 37.6 degrees to see the passenger side mirror instead of merely poking my eyes over at it. Were you hoping to see the yellow blind spot monitoring icon flashing over there in your peripheral? Forget about it, dummy, we don’t play that shit around here. You gotta turn that skull!

Okay, the center console does have physical controls, but with the exception of the volume dial (which is a proper twisty nob), they’re all the same-sized paddle that you just flick up and down. With no stylistic variation, I found myself needing to dedicate my attention to the paddles to find the one I needed to hit. The switches are labeled, but the “labels” are small digital displays over them. What the frick, GMC?

Last negative note is the backseat. I’m a tall guy, yes, but even when I had the front seat in a more forgiving position, my precious little boy knees had barely any room in the back. It’s baffling to me that a car so obtusely massive feels cramped inside for 60% of its occupants (75% of the passengers if we wanna be precisely pedantic). On one hand, sure, focus on making it a pleasurable experience for the driver, but I would be quite unhappy if I were in that backseat for a long time without a walk.

Actually Vrooming The Thing

Sorry about that previous section there; I get a little bit passionate about absurd things like that god forsaken second row. When it comes to driving it, though, the car was actually quite pleasant … for the most part.

If you’re worried about this feeling like a semi truck on the road, you’ll be forgiven, but mistaken. The torqued-up drivetrain gives you a 0-60 in the low threes, and the four-wheel steering is something to marvel and gawk at. During my drive, I made a U-turn around a median in Santa Clarita, and it just so happened that a GMC Yukon was ahead of me. The Yukon had to swing wide and use the full width of the opposing side’s street to complete the maneuver, while the Hummer felt like it was parked on the median’s apex and shimmied around it. I swear I could’ve clipped a tire on the concrete curbing if I had turned in a moment sooner. If you don’t believe me, Alanis proved the Hummer’s turning radius is tighter than that of a frickin ’04 Miata.

With its acceleration and maneuverability in mind, the car feels quite agile when doing totally normal car stuff, plus the cabin was a nice place to be in for it all as well! I felt plenty cozy in the driver’s seat, and it rode super smooth across any bump in the road (although I’ll readily admit the streets are very well maintained in Santa Clairta). With all that genuine positivity in mind, I got a lot of notes.

The size made me thoroughly uncomfortable the entire time I was driving it. No matter how hard I tried to keep it centered, I felt like I was always slipping into the lanes next to me. At one point, I parked it next to my Corvette to film B-roll, and when I sat down in the driver’s seat to get interior shots, I realized the Corvette was straight up nowhere to be found.

“But Griffin! Surely it would be different when actually on the road, and the cars are moving, and your acutely tuned apex predator vision hones in on the tangential vision from the nearby prey vehicles!” Wrong. You’re right that I have hawk-like eyes that will spot a twitch from a mile away, a skill that helps me bullseye womp rats in my T-16. And yet, every sedan that drove past me felt like it had just spawned in front of me, as I genuinely had no idea they were ever alongside me. It’s not just a height issue here, but a visibility issue, too.

I mentioned earlier how the Hummer’s width required you to make a committed effort to check the right-hand rearview mirror, but the center mirror isn’t much better, thanks to the paper-thin rear window that’s half obscured thanks to the spare tire on the door.

As this is an EV, you’re required to occasionally stab at the throttle to feel the insane amount of torque available to you at the slightest press of the accelerator. As soon as I did that, though, I immediately started to realize a massive problem with this car, and you can even test it yourself in an empty parking lot if you want to.

If you sit in your car and give a healthy press to the accelerator, you’re immediately gonna be pushed back in your seat as the weight comes off the front wheels and shifts towards the back with the change in the car’s momentum. Every car will do that, no matter how powerful or how small it is. The difference with the Hummer, however, is that you won’t feel like you were pushed into the seat, but that you’ve sunken into it, as the sheer weight of the vehicle crashed over me like a wave.

When you punch the accelerator here, you’re damn near staring at the sky with how high the nose lifts, and the car takes a full beat to level off after you take your foot off the accelerator. I’m telling you: this thing was pitching harder than Yoshinobu Yamamoto in game two of the World Series (go Dodgers!).

I didn’t do any brake tests with it, but here’s this from Car And Driver:

“While we were wowed by the Hummer EV’s unearthly acceleration, we were disappointed by its braking performance. Slowing the massive machine to a stop from 70 mph took an extra-long 211 feet, and repeated runs resulted in noticeable brake fade. Yikes.”

Yikes indeed, dude! The fade isn’t exactly surprising considering the sheer mass that the brakes need to slow, but good lord, it isn’t any less disturbing.

The Takeaways

Every aspect of this car seems to be a dichotomy. I think it’s insanely rad looking, but so hauntingly excessive to the point of tackiness. Its front seat is cozy and spacious, while the backseats make you realize how misused the space is. It’s nimble, and yet so clumsily unwieldy.

I feel like the only answer to the excessive body roll and accompanying brake fade is to just make the damn thing lighter, but more than anything, I can’t help but think the Hummer EV SUV just isn’t for this world. If it were scaled down maybe 15%, then it would be fantastic. It would clock in at a dainty 7,500 pounds, it would look at neighboring sports cars more like young kids on the playground as opposed to prey, and it would just be an all-around more pleasant thing to drive with all the alleviated stress. But that just ain’t the world we live in.

Even with all these flaws in mind, I still strangely like it. In my review of the F1 movie, “F1: The Movie,” I told y’all about my incredible, robust grading scale that my friends hate for some reason. Repeated below for you:

“10/10 no notes, for the exceptional films (Dune 2 is the first to come to mind); 10/10, some notes (Gladiator 2, wherein we know it won’t be as good as the first but saw some cool action so let’s move on); and 0/10 many notes (sorry Monkey Man, but you were an egregious waste of my time)”

While I did recently watch a movie that necessitated a new grade of “0/10, no notes” (it was Alex Garland’s Warfare, which was incredibly well made but painfully pointless), this car gets one of the original three grades from me: 10/10, some notes. It was enjoyable in more ways than not, but boy, does it have some issues. So there you have it.