Tesla Cybertruck Move Over, Enter The ‘Extreme’ 2025 GMC Hummer EV SUV: Review – Forbes

I can’t imagine any electric vehicle tougher than the 2025 GMC Hummer EV. Tesla Cyberbeast notwithstanding.

The following is a brief first-take review of the 2025 Hummer EV 3X (tri-motor) SUV with the available Extreme Off-Road package. General Motors graciously gave me the opportunity to drive it for a week around Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert. I’ve put the full specs at the bottom. (Note that I have test driven an AWD Cybertruck but not the Cyberbeast.)

Disclaimer: I do not do “extreme” off-roading (e.g., the Rubicon Trail in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains). That’s a small slice of off-roaders. I fall into a larger group of casual off-roaders. But I do sometimes face extreme conditions when I’m trying to cross vast unpopulated wilderness in places like the Mojave Desert.

TLDR:

Pros: Very tough, fearless off-road EV. Very little can stop this 9,000-pound+ beast. And the 35-inch tires are icing on the cake. It’s a Rivian R1S on steroids. Plenty of room to sleep in the back. (Comparable to some studio apartments I’ve rented.) Surprisingly quick/fast on the highway. The range is rated at 289 miles but I charged it to over 90 percent once and it was close to 300 miles. Cons: It’s huge / can be unwieldy in parking lots. It’s expensive to charge.

Mojave Desert:

In the past few months, I’ve taken four vehicles to the Mojave Desert. A Rivian R1S, a Rivian R1T, a Subaru Solterra, and a Ford Mustang Mach-E GT AWD. Let me put it this way: the Rivian is a tough, very competent off-road EV. But it ain’t a Hummer. (It’s not fair to compare the Subaru and Mach-E.) The Hummer is outrageous. With its 35-inch tires, extreme ground clearance, extreme power, and its sheer outrageous size. Let me put it another way: with the Hummer, you feel invincible in the Mojave outback even when you face the most extreme off-road conditions.

While the Hummer easily cut through Mojave’s soft sand, more importantly it didn’t flinch when faced with the many steep grades, treacherous angles, and rocky terrain that the Mojave foothills can throw up in your path. In one spot, about 25 miles north of the town of Mojave, Calif. near Red Rock Canyon State Park, I ran into extremely rocky terrain combined with steep grades that would disembowel lesser off-road vehicles. The Hummer crawled the rocks like it was born for just that purpose. (I stupidly forgot to use crab walk. My apologies to GM! But I really didn’t need it.)

Video footnote: I did not take video of the most challenging terrain. I was too consumed with driving and in most cases I was alone — hard to drive and take decent video at the same time.

Highway:

Amazingly, despite its size and weight, the Hummer EV doubles as a fast and very quick highway car. There’s a steep-grade onramp on Interstate 5 north of Castaic, Calif. that is my litmus test for the acceleration needed to outrace the swarms of big rigs bearing down on you when you jump onto 5. The Hummer is like a rocket. And I couldn’t help but think that some of those truckers were scratching their heads to see such a big vehicle move so fast. (I was scratching my head too.)

Other stuff (Super Cruise and charging):

Super Cruise: the Hummer is available with GM’s Super Cruise, a hands-free autonomous driving technology (Level 2), which I’ve used extensively on other GM vehicles. Super Cruise essentially drives the car in most highway situations. It does the acceleration, braking, lane changes, and steering. I used it as much as possible with the Hummer. It was a little rough in spots (sometimes didn’t recognize objects along the highway) and needlessly disengaged at times. But GM told me they fixed the latter bug and, like Tesla’s FSD, GM is constantly working to improve Super Cruise’s ability to deal with unexpected situations.

Charging: charging can definitely get pricey with the Hummer if you take a lot of long trips and use public charging. My humble Chevy Bolt costs, at most, $20 to fully charge from 10 percent to close to a full charge. The Hummer, just to do a partial charge, let’s say from 30 percent to 90 percent, can easily top $40. I’m in Southern California so charging these days can be pricey. (Not like the good old days when I could fully charge my Bolt at public chargers for about $12.) That said, I got very fast charges at Electrify America 350kW chargers, peaking at over 300kW. That translates to a very fast charge.

Tesla NACS adapter: The Hummer came with a NACS adapter that let me charge at Tesla Superchargers, which I did frequently. This is a must-have if you travel a lot. Tesla Supercharger locations are typically far superior to other public charging options like Electrify America. The critical difference is redundancy. Every Supercharger location I visited had at least a dozen chargers (often more). That means if a few are down, you still have plenty available. That’s not the case at Electrify America, which usually tops out at six chargers (occasionally eight). Though Electrify America has upgraded many of the chargers in Los Angeles in the past year or so, I still have to deal with queues and unavailable chargers at some Electrify America locations.

Upshot:

The 2025 GMC Hummer SUV 3X with Extreme Off-road Package is simultaneously flamboyant, unbreakably tough, and fast.

Full Specs:

2025 GMC Hummer EV 3X SUV (tri-motor) with the available Extreme Off-Road package.This includes 18-inch black aluminum wheels, 35-inch MT tires (Goodyear), front e-lockers with virtual rear lockers, additional underbody protection + skid plates, rocker protectors with assist steps, ball spline half shafts and easy-to-clean rubber flooring. This vehicle also comes with Gen 2 Super Cruise, GM’s autonomous vehicle (driver assist) technology. Price as shown above as of October 2024: $120,505.