Hummer EV First Look! All The Details Of GMC's All-Electric Supertruck

hello everyone and welcome in this video we are getting a first look at the new gmc hummer ev gmc was kind enough to let me get a sneak peek of the hummer before the reveal and i was able to chat with several of their engineers to learn all about it i hope you're ready to inject an absolutely unnecessary amount of information about the hummer ev into your brain we'll be talking features specifications party tricks and easter eggs and perhaps a bad joke or two as well you know why not start with a joke that collective sigh of relief you just felt is the appreciation that it doesn't look like the hummer h2 or wait does it hm i'll let you be the judge of the looks this behemoth has 000 horsepower over 350 miles of range and you wouldn't believe it based on its sheer size but it's good for 0 to 60 in about 3 seconds now what we are looking at is an early prototype but it's pretty close to being representative of the production version coming for the 2022 model year this particular model is the hummer ev edition one which is a limited run fully equipped version of the hummer ev and this trim package will be the first available there's a lunar theme not just in the color scheme for both interior and exterior but also many of the finer interior touches like the moon boot footprint and an outline of the sea of tranquility the landing location for the first walk on the moon by neil armstrong in 1969 you'll find a couple of boot prints throughout thanks to a massive highly rigid battery the body is quite rigid this enables the roof to come off in four individual pieces you'll see they snap off rather quickly and good news you don't have to worry about them taking up all the space in the bed of the truck the front trunk pops up with plenty of space to store all four roof panels the speed of the front hood lifting is slower on this prototype than what you'll see with the production vehicle and as you can see there's a significant amount of cargo space underneath top removed it's quite an open spacious cabin and i'm assuming based on the whole space thing that they'd like for you to look up at the stars it's good to relax occasionally the rear window can also drop down now i'm 6-1 and fit just fine in the front or back seats with space for my legs and head and behind the rear seats are clever storage compartments keep going back and the truck bed offers gmc's six position tailgate for the driver's seat you're met with a 12.3 inch driver information display plus a 13.4 inch infotainment screen which displays all sorts of vehicle information there are selectable drive modes altering ride height as well as torque split which we'll cover with a few more details later on in the video one of the hummer ev's most prominent party tricks is called watts to freedom mode i asked their eevee integration engineer what watts to freedom mode is and he simply said it's amazing the silly name aside watts to freedom mode is essentially the 0 to 60 mode it lowers the front and rear suspension by about 2 inches the electronically controlled dampers are stiffened preventing the enormous body of the truck from pitching back during acceleration and to ensure you're aware of exactly what's happening the seats rumble and the speakers make bassy sounds all the while the motor inverters unlock additional current and initiate additional cooling you plant your foot on the brake put on the accelerator pedal let go of the brake and boom 0-60 in about 3 seconds in something that looks heavy enough that it takes ages to reach those speeds the hummer also has a crab mode in large vehicles like this hummer it's not unusual to offer rear wheel steering where the rear wheels rotate opposite the front wheels to help allow for better maneuverability at low speeds but the hummer can also have the rear wheels match the front wheels at low speeds both turning the same direction with the rear wheels able to rotate up to 10 degrees so the whole vehicle shifts to the side like a crab a fun off-road trick and there are plenty more clever off-road elements starting with the suspension there's an air suspension all the way around with a base ride height offering 10.1 inches of ground clearance with extract mode in case you've gotten yourself in a bit of trouble and perhaps are stuck the air suspension lifts nearly 6 inches giving you 15.9 inches of ground clearance to navigate out of your situation you know extract mode and there are many different modes for the air suspension to adjust height getting in or out of the vehicle it's able to lower about two inches down from its 10.1 inch standard ride height the ride height will also decrease if you're cruising on the highway or you can raise it up for off-road use overall varying the ground clearance from about 8 inches to nearly 16 inches and all of that's fairly tricky to do to make sure the wheels and suspension can still function optimally for the different positions additionally if you need even more ground clearance the truck's ready to accommodate 37-inch tires right from the factory no issues with clearance and the speedometer can adjust to the new tire size standard it comes with 35 inch goodyear wrangler all territory tires if you're wondering if it can air up or air down from inside the cabin like the hummer h1 no there aren't air lines connected to each wheel however it does come with some clever features like setting the horn to honk at a certain pressure while you're airing down so you don't have to constantly check so what's powering these wheels three electric motors make up the hummer ev's e4-wheel drive system it's a very clever system with a lot of neat features all three electric motors one in the front and two in the rear are identical it's gm's largest electric motor permanent magnet ac and it's rated for 250 kilowatts of power 250 kilowatts times three motors gives you a total output of 750 kilowatts or roughly 1 000 horsepower i'm told this peak 1000 horsepower is only achievable while in watts to freedom mode which is generally intended just for some quick 0-60 sprints not to be driven in for long durations now you might wonder why three motors why not one for each wheel well as it turns out the front axle really isn't capable of putting down much more power due to the load transfer that occurs under acceleration in fact during a hard 0 to 60 launch the front axle is actually traction limited even with just one motor up until about 35 miles per hour from a power standpoint three motors is all that's needed but three motors does allow for them to do some very clever all-wheel drive tricks the two rear motors although packaged in the same power unit are completely independent that means each motor is directly paired with one rear tire and doesn't have any influence on the other by doing this you can easily integrate true torque vectoring there's no rear differential just an independent connection from each drive motor through a reduction gearbox to the wheels up front a single motor splits torque through an electronic locking differential to the two front tires one of my favorite tricks they do is how they lock the individual axles you can speed sink the rear tires meaning both tires will always rotate at the exact same speed by quote locking the rear again there's no physical lock the motors are simply matching speed which effectively replicates a locked rear differential and you can lock the front differential and in doing so all four tires synchronize speeds thus acting as a front center and rear locked differential great for low speed technical rock crawling but unlike locked rear differentials you have the option of allowing the rear motors to provide torque vectoring now i asked them why they're calling it e4-wheel drive versus all-wheel drive and it simply comes down to a marketing decision of four-wheel drive being a more rugged term to use versus all-wheel drive now to be clear all four wheels are driven however there is not a low range transfer case as this isn't needed with electric vehicles that have excellent low-end torque but you also cannot select the vehicle to be rear-wheel drive only in other words it's all-time all-wheel drive even though technically it could be possible for it to operate only the front or only the rear axle at least for now the driver cannot do this though i encourage gmc to include a future update that allows for rear-wheel drive only now i mentioned the motors send torque through a reduction gearbox meaning the electric motors are spinning faster than the wheels this brings up a point about evs that's bothered me when the tesla roadster was announced they said it had ten thousand pound-feet of torque they didn't immediately state that this was wheel torque which was a very important distinction because it's motor torque multiplied by the gear ratio hummer has done the same thing claiming 11 500 pound-feet of torque and they did finally verify to me that this is indeed wheel torque but every other car company is giving you engine torque or motor torque so this high number is deceiving without context gmc hasn't yet said what the motor torque will be but they were kind enough to give me gear ratios for both the front and rear axles so we can calculate it on our own the front gearbox reduction has a 13.3 to 1 ratio and the rear has a 10.5 to 1 ratio we know that all three motors are the same so if we assume that they each have the same torque we can do a little math to find out what the motor torque is 11 500 equals two rear motors at a 10.5 gear ratio plus one front motor at a 13.3 gear ratio this is exciting right solve for x or each motor and you get about 335 pound feet so my best estimate is this truck has 1 000 horsepower and 1 000 pound feet of torque let's move on to the camera system there are 18 different camera views and many cameras but two of them stand out to me if you've ever done any serious off-roading you'll know how critical it can be at times to have a spotter guiding your path the hummer features front and rear underbody cameras to act as virtual spotters allowing you to see the front inside of your front tires from a camera mounted just behind the front motor or looking back to see your rear tire placement again from directly underneath the vehicle now won't these cameras get covered in mud and thus be useless on the trail gmc thought of this as well so they have sprayers that you can activate that pull fluid from the windshield washer reservoir to clean off the camera lenses if the view has been obstructed also underneath the truck the front motor carriage rear motor carriage and battery pack will all have underbody armor protecting them steel plates that are not yet present on this prototype now like the chevy bolt the hummer ev will also offer one pedal driving and it will offer configurable regen settings meaning you can do all of the driving without ever touching the brake pedal unless you need to stop very quickly and there's even going to be off-road one pedal driving which will be smart and know when to incorporate the mechanical brakes in scenarios where you actually want to lock the wheels up or incorporate higher braking forces while driving at low speeds where regen is minimal alright well let's say you're getting a little too aggressive with your right foot in terms of the accelerator pedal well there's an algorithm designed to protect the half shafts of course these are massive beefy half shafts but certain scenarios put them at greater risk for example when you're at the end of your steering lock and the wheel is all the way turned and you apply full throttle this can be brutal and destroy half shafts gm's throttle management incorporates an algorithm to free up available torque as the wheel straightens ensuring you don't exceed the limits of your axles all right let's have a look at the battery i'm not sure if you were aware yet but there's two things that are very important about this hummer first of all it's electric second it's massive and so a massive ev is going to need a massive battery and that's exactly what this is as this is perhaps the most critical component of the truck and this is engineering explained i'm going to try and provide more detail than you'd likely care to hear about this battery pack let's start with what we know gmc says based on preliminary testing the hummer ev will have over 350 miles of range now remember this is without a doubt a hummer and what i mean by that is to say that it has a lot in common with a brick it doesn't appear all that aerodynamic with a steeply raked windshield and massive presence and it's certainly going to be heavy besides it also has a whole additional windshield wiper that it has to power now we don't have the aerodynamic numbers nor the weight numbers from gmc's marketing and not sharing them up front is probably the right call so how does something this giant get 350 miles of range a massive battery about double the size of the largest production electric cars on the road in 2020. i'm told by gm that it's over 200 kilowatt hours for comparison the jumbo tesla model x battery pack is about a hundred kilowatt hours so this is double that this battery features gm's latest ultim battery technology made in partnership with lg chem these are pouch style lithium-ion battery cells the material selection uses nickel cobalt manganese and aluminum or nmca the breakthrough with gm's oltium batteries is their reduction of dependence on cobalt using 70 less cobalt versus the style of battery used in the chevy volt cobalt is the rarest element in the pack so it's important to reduce dependence on it but cobalt is also very useful it helps stabilize the cathode that's nerd talk for the battery last longer when cobalt is present because the chemical reactions occurring within the cell don't break it down as quickly over time gm claims you can improve energy density by increasing the percentage of nickel used and as a counter measure for reducing cobalt aluminum is added a much more abundant element okay back to the actual battery pack used in the hummer batteries are made up of a bunch of individual battery cells in this case the cell is a rectangular pouch it can be stacked horizontally or vertically and for larger vehicles like the hummer that have the space the cells are stacked vertically within each module each module contains 24 of these pouch cells each group of three pouches is connected in parallel and the next three pouches are flipped around connected in series so you have eight sets connected in series of three pouches connected in parallel giving you one complete module then you have 12 modules all linked together giving you a 400 volt battery pack for the hummer you have two of these 400 volt packs stacked on top of each other connected in parallel meaning 24 modules each with 24 cells in them or 576 cells now here's where we can have a little fun with some math it's been many years since i've taken an electrical engineering course and okay to be fair i only took one and well i skipped that class a lot because i found it incredibly boring however there are some things we know we know we have 576 cells total and we know each cell has about 100 amp hours if you multiply amp hours by volts you get watt hours or kilowatt hours which is how we talk about battery energy storage now typical lithium ion battery cells have about 3.5 to 3.8 nominal volts so using this range we can calculate the overall pack size to be about 202 kilowatt hours to 219 kilowatt hours again all i've learned from gm is that it's over 200 kilowatt hours upon first glance of the battery pack there's a distinct lack of wiring visible of course this is simply a prototype we're looking at however gm has actually incorporated wireless battery communication eliminating quite a bit of wiring the battery controllers wirelessly communicate with each individual battery module again there are 24 total here measuring the battery's voltage of each cell group monitoring temperature and balancing cell voltages the benefit of going wireless is that this future proofs the battery pack if a module needs to be replaced or if new battery technology comes along down the line the wireless controller can communicate with the new battery chemistry and keep all of the electronics happy you don't have to use old parts if new parts are available and again if any cell were to fail you can replace the individual module not the entire battery pack we haven't yet talked about charging and this is another area where the hummer has done some future proofing i mentioned the battery being made up of two 400 volt packs connected in parallel but what if a customer plugs their car into an 800 volt charger well some clever switches and relays reconfigure the two battery packs to now be in series effectively turning the 400 volt battery into an 800 volt battery for charging more voltage means you can send more power into the battery pack without using massive cables and this enables the hammer ev to charge it up to 350 kilowatts if you were to maintain that speed even a battery as large as the hummers could be fully charged from fully depleted in a little over 30 minutes though in reality these peak speeds are only available during certain portions of the charging process either way it's going to be able to add a lot of range very quickly gm says you can add a hundred miles of range in about 10 minutes and on the exterior you'll notice a fun charging sequence as the battery charges the front lights will display the battery's charge level the rear lights will as well building from bottom to top to display the charging status so there it is the 2022 gmc hummer ev production will begin in late 2021 in gm's factory zero in michigan usa thank you to gmc for letting me get a sneak peek of the hummer and for sharing so much information with me thank you all so much for watching if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 994,103

Keywords: 2022 GMC Hummer EV, Hummer EV, GMC Hummer EV, GMC Hummer EV Review, Hummer EV First Look, Hummer EV Complete Look, 2022 Hummer EV, First Look, Exclusive, Engineering Explained

Id: LkM0L4_W_pM

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020