I borrowed the EV Hummer to visit my mom - and the drive almost ruined Mother's Day

I love cars, so when the folks at GMC offered me an opportunity to take their new Hummer EV out for a spin by driving it ~800 miles on one of California's biggest highways, I jumped at the chance.

That's how I wound up preparing for Mother's Day weekend by doing my laundry, shopping for flowers and taking delivery of a hulking 2025 GMC Hummer EV 3X SUV ($104,650 to start) at my tiny Oakland apartment.

See, my family lives roughly 400 miles south in Orange County, and in the fifteen years since I left home I've made the drive down to see them dozens of times. So I know the routes well, and I've spent hundreds of dollars at truck stops and gas stations all along the way.

I love driving so making the 8-hour haul every other month isn't too bad, but I do feel guilty about how much I'm contributing to pollution by burning so much gas — and I don't love how much it costs to fill my Civic's 12-gallon tank.

That's why I was excited to take one of GMC's newest EVs for a test drive. I've been EV-curious for ages, but despite living in one of the tech hubs of the world I still don't trust that I'll be able to drive an EV everywhere I want to with reliable access to charging stations. So as I set out to drive down the I-5 to L.A. Friday morning, I was anxious and excited to see how I'd fare scouting for charging stations in the California desert.

Luckily, GMC makes it fairly easy via the free myGMC app, which lets you control the car remotely and can also show you a live map of available charging stations across 15+ charging networks in the U.S. and Canada. Nearly all the networks allow you to charge the 2025 Hummer EV by just pulling up, plugging in and paying your fee, but they often require you to download a proprietary app and the Tesla chargers require a special adapter to use (which GMC kindly provided for my test drive).

That app saved me being stranded in the desert night on Mother's Day weekend, which I'm grateful for. But if I'd read my colleague John Velasco's report of driving the 2025 Hummer EV for a week a little more closely I'd have been more careful on the road, because it turns out that as fun as this EV Hummer is to drive, it's awfully inefficient — and that added a palpable thrill of danger to the range anxiety I felt driving an EV 400 miles across the desert and back.

Range anxiety is real

John spent more time with the 2025 Hummer EV than I did and has a keener eye for EV performance, so I should have paid more attention when he said it had the worst efficiency (1.6 mi/kWh) of any EV he's tested in the past year.

But I'm still pretty new to driving an EV, so when I climbed into the Hummer EV (and it was a climb, even for 6'4" me) and saw it had just under 300 miles' worth of juice I figured I could easily make it over halfway to L.A. before stopping to charge.

That might have proved true if I'd been brave enough to run the engine down to near-empty, but it seemed like the miles remaining counter dropped a little faster than I expected on the first leg of the drive. So I pulled off the road early in Santa Nella, about 100 miles into my trip, to charge at a Shell EV ReCharge station.

This turned out to be the worst charging experience of the whole trip, which was a rough way to start out. I thought it would be a quick stop because the myGMC app showed me an open and functional Shell charging station rated to deliver 100 kW/hour. The car was at roughly 40% charge and I wanted to get it up to at least 80% before setting back out, so I figured i could probably do that in an hour or less at 100kWh/hour since the Hummer comes with a 170kWh battery by default (though you can upgrade it for an additional fee).

But as it turns out, once I downloaded the requisite app, paid my money and got the charging station going it wasn't delivering power nearly as fast as I'd hoped. Perhaps the 100 kWh/hour rating is more of an ideal than a reality, but I sure didn't know that until I came back to the car an hour into the charge and found the battery capacity had increased by 20% or so, forcing me to hang around in the hot desert for another hour so I could feel safe getting back on the road.

I considered setting off earlier and finding a different charging station since the Shell one wasn't doing a great job, but the myGMC app showed there weren't any non-Tesla charging stations within 200 miles — and the next ideal charging stop (at an In-N-Out where I hoped to eat dinner) was about 245 miles down the freeway.

So I resigned myself to sitting in the Hummer for another hour or so as I waited for it to charge enough to make it 250 miles down the road. When the mileage remaining meter climbed up to 290 miles or so I started to plot the next leg of my journey in the myGMC app, but to my horror it kept telling me I'd never make it 250 miles — even though the car itself said I would.

This is probably old news to veteran EV drivers, but to a newbie like me it was incomprehensible. How could the car think I could make it almost 300 miles, but the car app estimated I'd be at -3% battery after 250? I decided to chance the app being mistaken and hit the road — nearly stranding myself in the process.

See, what I didn't appreciate until this trip is how much EV range is determined not just by engine efficiency but by how you're using the engine on the road. So not only does my lead foot probably cause the Hummer EV to chew through battery power faster than if I'd just left the thing in Super Cruise Control mode the whole drive, the steep climb over the California Grapevine did a number on my maximum mileage.

Before I got there I had to make a 20-minute detour to a second charging station in Avenal, because the Hummer EV started running low on juice about 200 miles into that leg of the drive. So rather than risk not making it 50 miles to the next charger, I pulled off the highway in Kettleman City and drove 8-10 miles out of the way to a dark, deserted gas station with an EVConnect station where I spent another hour and change charging the Hummer up to 50-60% battery.

At this point it was nearly midnight. I'd been on the road almost 8 hours and I still had at least two hours to go until I could rest. I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed because if I'd taken my gas-guzzling Civic I'd have been in bed by that point, and it wouldn't even have been more expensive since the total cost of charging the Hummer's battery multiple times ended up being about as pricey as two 12-gallon tanks of premium unleaded.

But as comfortable as the spacious interior of the 2025 Hummer EV 3X is, I couldn't manage to contort my lanky frame into a position comfortable enough to sleep well. So after dozing for an hour, I unplugged the car and set off for my final charging stop, at an In-N-Out just outside L.A. where I would need to charge up again before driving the final 45 minutes to my destination.

Despite the fact that the Hummer said I had enough range to make it to my parents' house, the myGMC app told me I'd be lucky to make it halfway before running out of juice.

As it turns out this was absolutely spot on, because as soon as the Hummer started climbing the steep grade that leads you roughly 4,000 feet up and over the Grapevine, the miles remaining counter started dropping precipitously. When I started going over the pass, I had roughly 100 or so miles remaining on the gauge, but before I'd gone 20 up the steep, winding road the mileage counter had dropped to roughly 40-50 miles remaining, spooking me again since that gave me barely enough charge to get to my final charging stop.

Luckily, regenerative braking and the lack of engine drain when going downhill on the south side of the pass helped me preserve some mileage and arrive at the Valencia In-N-Out EVGo charging station at roughly 2 AM with ~40 miles still in the battery. So I charged there for another hour, chatted with some other EV owners who for some reason were also there at 2 AM, then got back on the road for the final leg.

By the time I made it to my parents' house it was past 3 in the morning, and I'd been traveling for just over 12 hours. Admittedly it was the most comfortable 12 hours I'd ever spent on the road, but I was still pretty bummed about it.

You may have noticed that I never mentioned stopping at a Tesla Supercharger station on the first leg of my journey despite the fact that GMC gave me the adapter to use them.

I did end up stopping at Tesla stations on the return trip, and since they're both numerous in California and rated to be more capable (up to 450 kW/H) than many of the other chargers I encountered, I do think the Tesla adapter is a worthy splurge for folks who plan to drive an EV long distances across regions with Tesla chargers.

Because without access to Tesla's network, at least in California, there are long stretches of road where you will find no usable charging station for 100-200 miles or more — and that can leave you stranded without careful planning.

However, even when I did stop at Tesla's charging stations I was frustrated by the experience.

The first one I used down in Fullerton worked seamlessly, and it did give me a faster charge than any other station I tried, charging the Hummer roughly 60% in about 30 minutes. If I could count on having that kind of charger available at regular intervals, I could drive an EV anywhere in the country without worry.

But the next Tesla Supercharger station I stopped at (in Kettleman City) almost stranded me again because I didn't leave much juice in the battery, as I was counting on the station having available working chargers. The myGMC app told me it had 48 charging stations, 30+ of which were available, but despite trying 8 or 9 of them I couldn't get any to successfully connect to the Hummer and charge it.

That really flummoxed me, since not 8 hours prior I had been successfully using the Fullerton Tesla Supercharger to charge the Hummer without trouble. But I was slowly draining the Hummer's already-low battery by driving it around the Kettleman City Tesla lot trying out different chargers, and when it started to tick down below 8% (told you I'd left charging until the last minute) I began to panic.

So once again I had to pull off the highway and drive ~15 minutes out to Avenal to charge at the same EVConnect charger I'd last seen by the light of the moon on the first leg of my trip. This time around I had a nicer visit since the gas station wasn't deserted and the attached supermarket was open, but it was still a less-than-ideal experience which shook my faith in Tesla Superchargers.

But after charging up in Avenal for an hour or so I managed to make it up to a Tesla Supercharger station in Santa Nella which worked just fine, so perhaps I just had a bad experience (or was simply too dumb to figure out the machines) at the Kettleman City Tesla station.

Bottom line

I really enjoyed my time driving the 2025 GMC Hummer EV (for the most part) because it's a very spacious, comfortable vehicle that comes with a lot of useful safety systems and features, including Super Cruise Control, a spacious frunk and a rear-view camera with a wide view that helps cut down on blind spots around the massive machine.

I also love that I don't feel bad about how inefficient it is because it's not burning gasoline or contributing to the continued depletion of the planet's oil and gas reserves.

But I have to say, the inefficiency of the 2025 Hummer EV and the poor, inconsistent performance of the charging stations I encountered along the way caused me to have a much worse trip than if I'd just taken my Civic. And while I could never afford this $100,000 EV on a journalist's salary, I'm disappointed that the dream of being able to replace my gas guzzler with an EV and still drive where I like, when I like remains a dream.

Even if I had the luxury of being able to charge it at home (which I highly recommend if you're going to buy an EV), the inefficiency of the engine and the unreliable charging network handicapped my range and forced me to drive conservatively, adding hours to my driving time in the process.

So while I loved my time behind the wheel of the 2025 Hummer EV 3X, I can't recommend it for anything other than local commuting and short (100-200 mile) weekend jaunts. If I didn't feel safe driving 400 miles in California, which has more EV charging stations than any state in the country, it's hard to see range anxiety in the U.S. being a thing of the past anytime soon.

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