Hummer EV drag races are a hot commodity right now, and I’m super excited to bring you one that nobody else has shown until now. A YouTube channel called Brink of Speed has a C8 Corvette that went up against one of the first Hummer EVs to roll off the assembly line.
The Hummer is very desirable right now. Donut Media found one that used to be for sale at almost $300,000, which makes the official price of $110,000 seem like a joke. But that just tells you there aren’t enough of these crazy EVs to go around.
Why the Corvette? Well, that’s what the YouTuber owns. The C8 has been one of the top American vehicles of the past couple of years, with markups that are about as crazy as the GMC pickup. We know that it’s surprisingly fast in a drag race, but if you only look at the output, it’s completely outclassed.
The Corvette makes 495 horsepower and the Hummer makes about 1000 hp. So that’s double the output, but is that enough to compensate for the weight of the batteries and all that off-road goodness.
There are lots of complexities going on behind the scenes; this is not like racing two sports cars. The 2022 GMC Hummer EV is a monster from Detroit which uses three motors to produce 1,000 horsepower and about 1,100 lb-ft of torque. Those sound a lot like the specs of a Tesla Model S Plaid, but we are dealing with something which weighs 9,046 lbs, a figure which I struggle to even comprehend.
On the one hand, GM wants people to race it. There’s even a Watts to Freedom driving mode which lowers the suspension and plays USS Enterprise noises through the speakers as you’re about to drag race this. However, it’s also limited to 106 miles per hour for safety reasons. That sounds absolutely ridiculous: as powerful as a Bugatti yet as slow as a little Fiat 500.
The C8 Corvette, on the other hand, has a serious top speed of 194 mph and only weighs 3,647 lbs. That’s only slightly more than the Hummer’s batteries alone. But is it going to struggle for traction against an EV with three motors? Let’s find out.
The two drivers aren’t doing a full quarter-mile race because the warehouse parking lot they’re using isn’t long enough. But the Hummer would lose that anyway because of the top speed thing. What’s interesting is that Chevy’s sporty Corvette seems to be faster by just a tiny fraction.
