2022 GMC Hummer EV: How does an electric pickup beat Porsche and Mercedes AMG? Like this

The 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup is an automotive platypus, and not just because the massive, nearly silent electric vehicle looks like a visitor from an alternate reality.

Like the egg-laying, duck-billed aquatic mammal 18th-century British “experts” famously dismissed as a fraud put together with mismatched pieces of other creatures, the Hummer EV may seem like a box of contradictions, but it’s uniquely suited to its spot in evolution’s progression.

Flamboyantly intended to attract buyers who spurned previous electric vehicles, its styling screams “Hummer,” the in-your-face brand that has became synonymous with extravagant fossil fuel consumption — but it doesn’t have a tailpipe, much less climate-altering emissions.

As aerodynamic as a cinder block, it can accelerate to 60 mph in about 3 seconds, supercar territory.

As wide as a heavy-duty pickup, it slips nimbly in and out of tight spaces thanks to four-wheel steering that seems to shrink the truck to fit.

Not your sociology prof’s EV

As it launches a new family of electric vehicles, General Motors had to reestablish its chops for innovation, design and engineering. The $108,700 GMC Hummer EV checks every box so hard it rips the paper.

New EVs are often called would-be Tesla-killers, but that’s a gross oversimplification. Tesla is fabulously successful, but every vehicle it ever sold — just over 2 million, by most estimates — is less than GM sold in the United States alone in 2021, a lousy year for the General.

More:GM’s Barra says self-driving car goes on sale soon

More:GM and Honda team up to build a new series of ‘affordable’ electric vehicles

EV success doesn’t consist of beating Tesla. It requires converting millions of buyers from internal combustion vehicles to EVs.

The GMC Hummer EV was developed not to snake customers from Elon, but to kick the butts of conventional luxury-sport SUVs like the $157,500 Mercedes AMG G 63 and the $166,500 Porsche Turbo E-hybrid.

With up to 1,000 horsepower at the wheels and more tricks up its sleeve than Dr. Strange, the Hummer EV pickup just may do it.

Welcome to the multiverse of EVs, where some will be bare-bones transportation and others can legitimately call themselves “super trucks.”

How big, how fast, how much?

I recently spent a day driving Hummer EVs through the Arizona desert, highways and suburban Phoenix, including a spring hail and rain squall that turned an already challenging dirt and rock slope into a muddy slip ’n’ slide.

There’s nothing else like it, which is exactly the reason people have always bought Hummers. GM is convinced mixing that with the widely admired GMC brand, loads of technology, a side order of social responsibility — and a soupçon of “Don’t ask. You can’t afford it” — make the GMC Hummer the ideal vehicle to launch its leap into electric vehicles.

Technically a pickup, the Hummer has a roomy five-passenger cabin and a 4-foot, 10-inch bed. 

It weighs an enormous 9,065 pounds — actually 9,243 for the well-equipped model I tested. The limited Edition 1 model — already sold out — cost $108,700, has three electric motors that produce 1,000 hp and 1,200 pound-feet of torque. (You may have seen the gasp-inducing, slightly overwrought claim of 11,500 pound-feet. That’s measured at the wheels, after the torque has been multiplied by gearing in the drivetrain. The 1,200 pound-feet figure is more consistent with how torque is generally measured at the crankshaft of an engine, and so stinkin’ impressive GMC didn’t have to play games with it.)

Innovation abounds

The Hummer has every feature you can imagine, and a few you probably can’t unless you’ve seen the adorable commercial in which a legion of crabs bow down before the electric behemoth’s ability to move sideways.

To name a few:

  • Four-wheel steering
  • Air suspension for a smooth highway ride and up to 32 inches of water fording
  • Hands-free highway driving, including no-touch lane changes for passing
  • “WTF” performance mode, which tweaks the battery and other systems to produce the full 1,000 hp and 3-second 0-60 mph time
  • Bose-tuned audio for outstanding music, plus unique sounds crafted to communicate performance, off-road capability and more.