GMC Hummer EV Shows That Electric Cars Can Have $100 Fillups Too

• It could cost more than $100 to fill the GMC Hummer EV’s big battery pack at a fast-charging station.

• We performed our charging test at an Electrify America station, which costs $0.43 per kilowatt-hour.

• The Hummer maxed out at an impressive 287-kW charging rate, second only to the Lucid Air in this year’s field of EV of the Year contenders.

Welcome to Car and Driver’s Testing Hub, where we zoom in on the test numbers. We’ve been pushing vehicles to their limits since 1956 to provide objective data to bolster our subjective impressions (you can see how we test here).

It costs a lot of money to fill up a big pickup truck’s gas tank—especially these days. But what if we told you that even an electric pickup truck could crest the $100 mark when it comes time to replenish the battery? That’s what we found when we plugged the 2022 GMC Hummer EV in for a fast-charge session.

For our charging test, we plugged the Hummer in at an Electrify America station to go from 10 percent charge to 90 percent charge. At current rates of $0.43 per kWh, adding 80 percent charge cost us $81, including sales tax. Extrapolating from that, to go from 0 percent to 100 percent charge at a DC fast-charging station would cost over $100. The Hummer did hit an impressive 287-kW peak charge rate, second only to the Lucid Air among the 20 competitors in this year’s field of EV of the Year contenders. But its average between 10 and 90 percent state of charge was a less wowing 98 kW and, partially because the pack is so large, it took an hour an 49 minutes to add that 80-percent charge.

Now, you might notice that multiplying the Hummer EV’s total battery capacity of 212.7 kWh by $0.43 doesn’t quite come to $100. But there are charging losses, as evidenced by our 80 percent fill that took 177.9 kWh, about five percent more than what made it into the pack (80 percent of the total capacity is 170.2 kWh). And our session in Michigan added a 6 percent sales tax, which of course varies by state.

Charging costs can also vary by state, and by charging provider. But the point remains: although GM has attempted to recast the Hummer for the electrified era, that doesn’t mean it’s cheap to fuel. It is, after all, a 9640-pound, 1000-horsepower, four-wheel-drive pickup truck that costs six figures, no matter what it’s powered by.