On the Rocky Road to Zero Emissions, Make Room for the Hummer EV
Can a 1,000-horsepower electric SUV with a polarizing heritage really help blaze a path to transportation decarbonization?
Big green machine: The 2022 GMC Hummer EV isn’t aimed at traditional electric car buyers. But it could still have a role to play in bringing greenhouse gas emissions down.
Photo courtesy GMC
For those who don’t remember, the first incarnation of the Hummer, a line of trucks and SUVs sold by General Motors from 1992 to 2008, represented perhaps the fullest expression of the term “car culture” — enormous, expensive, gas-guzzling, and made famous by wars in the Middle East.
The GMC Hummer EV, the rebooted version of the brand revealed last week, preserves most of those elements. It’s enormous and expensive, but it uses battery power in place of gasoline. The company says that the massive vehicle, which is racing the rival Tesla Cybertruck and others to the nascent e-pickup market, “reimagines an instantly-recognizable silhouette for a modern, all-electric future.” Could a $100,000 electric supertruck convince skeptical SUV fans to give up on internal combustion and thus speed the decarbonization of transportation? Or is it the worst kind of greenwashing?