The GMC Hummer EV certainly lives up to the Hummer name. It’s massive both in size and weight and may not be very efficient despite it being an EV. Now, thanks to a teardown done by Munro & Associates, we have an idea of just how good of a job GM did in packaging its Ultium battery pack. The short answer is they didn’t do a very good job.
It’s important to point out that while Sandy Munro has highlighted how bad the Model 3’s build quality is, he remains a Tesla fan, so take things here with a grain of salt, but if nothing else the teardown does show just how massive the battery is.
The Hummer EV itself is already heavy, tipping the scales at over 9,000 pounds, with a large part of that weight being its 246 kWh battery, currently the biggest in the business.
Munro & Associates engineers Antonio DiNunno and Julian Aytes note that when dropped from the vehicle, the pack weighed in at 1,278 kg or 2,818 pounds. For perspective, the heaviest Mazda Miata you can buy, a fully loaded Miata RF Grand Touring with an automatic transmission, weighs 322 pounds less (2,496 pounds) than the pack.
In a warning for those worried about what’s going to happen if the battery needs to come out of the vehicle for servicing, the engineers noted that it wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to remove. Its weight didn’t help things, but the main culprit was what the pack itself is made of: stamped steel. The engineers said typically when they do these battery teardowns, they expect to see an aluminum cradle as automakers have been going for weight savings. Except GM, that is. The pack is also made up of a complex assortment of individual steel pieces held together by 3,500 laser welds. All this adds cost to the manufacturing of the truck.
Other components of the battery pack trouble the engineers, too, like packaging difficulties, though I still can’t get over the size and weight, which was maybe inevitable, this being America.