9,000 Pound Paperweight: $115,000 Hummer EV Immediately Bricks Itself and Strands Driver in Rush Hour Traffic

This Hummer EV perfectly illustrates the downside of owning an all-electric vehicle. It locks up like a broken laptop.

Much like the Ford F-150 Lightning, the Hummer EV has been in great demand. Folks have been paying outrageous markups to be among the very first to own the new all-electric Hummer EV. It seems that these people are paying vast amounts of money not for an SUV, but to be beta testers for GM. What we have here is a Hummer EV that is only a couple of days old. It is about as brand new as you can get. And while simply driving along in rush hour traffic the truck threw and steering fault code. The driver tried to reset it at a light and that resulted in the truck completely locking up and stranding him in the middle of the road.

Unfortunately for GM the driver stranded was Roman Mica from the successful YouTube channel The Fast Lane Truck. So, like any good YouTuber, Mica recorded the entire ordeal and posted it for us all to see. We understand that any vehicle can suffer a breakdown, even one that is brand new. Especially one that is an all-new design with new technology. However, this is a really bad look for GM and the Hummer EV. This is their halo vehicle that people are clamoring to get. It is their super tough, do-anything off-roader. But it can’t handle a little rain while driving on the street? Perhaps this is karma at work here. Mica purchased the Hummer EV by trading in his (fully functional) F-150 Lightning.

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

This is the scary part of all-electric vehicles. They are more software than machine. So, when something goes wrong, they behave more like a broken laptop than a broken vehicle. In this case the Hummer EV completely locked up. The shifter would not move out of park. The hood would not open. The entire truck was just frozen. In the middle of traffic. Thankfully a police officer came on the scene to protect the truck otherwise there was a significant risk of an accident. Mica tried everything to get the Hummer EV going again. But to no avail. You can hear the frustration in his voice while he tries multiple times to reset the truck. He eventually calls out for a tow truck and settles in for the 1-hour wait.

New Technology

Mica had his son arrive on the scene and both of them tried to work on getting the truck unlocked. They wanted to unhook the battery but that was not easy either as the hood would not open. Eventually they found the manual override for the hood and were able to get access to the battery shortly after the tow truck driver arrived. They disconnected the battery and reconnected it. Getting inside the truck they were prompted to perform a number of steps and that did eventually get the truck back to life. However, by this point the damage as already been done. Would you ever be able to trust a vehicle like this again after this? What if you were out in the middle of an off-road park or desert and this happened?

The Future

Is this the future? Many folks have been apprehensive about the all-electric future and this video will not do anything to quell those fears. Sure, a traditional ICE vehicle can also leave you stranded. But it also gives you a chance in most cases to fix it if you have some mechanical ability. Vehicles like this Hummer EV are really just rolling computers. And anyone that has worked with a computer at any point in their life knows how frustrating they can be, and how seemingly random breakdowns can occur. Computers have been around a long time, and we still see failures all the time. It has to make you just a bit apprehensive about relying on them to control an entire vehicle. Of course, this could just be GM and their quality control.

Other Hummer EV owners are probably not happy with what they see in this video. But they are a small percentage of the market. However, a lot of the Hummer EV technology is going to be in the Silverado EV and other GM products. A breakdown like what we see here does not bode well for them.

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Joe Kucinski

Joe has been obsessed with cars since he got his very first Matchbox toy in the ‘70s. In 2003, he found a new obsession in track days that led to obtaining his SCCA competition license in 2015. In 2019, he became a certified driving instructor for the National Auto Sport Association. His love for all things four wheels has never wavered, whether it's driving some of the best cars in the world on the racetrack, tackling 2,000-mile road trips in 2-seat sports cars or being winched off the side of a mountaintop in a Jeep. Writing for the suite of Internet Brands Auto Communities sites, including Rennlist.com, Ford Truck Enthusiasts, 6 Speed and more allows him to share that knowledge and passion with others.