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Comment by rad_gruchalski | Hacker News Reader

> That battery, by far the largest ever shoehorned into an EV, also contributes 1,315 kilograms to the Hummer’s gargantuan 4,082-kg curb weight.

Wow. 4 tonnes. The battery weighs more than a VW Golf 8 1.5 eTSI.

These things are going to wreck havoc in the road infrastructure. 4 tonnes in 3 seconds to 60… good bye tarmac.

At least we won’t see many of those in Europe. Standard B license in Europe has a limit of 3500 kg.

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Frankly you won’t see many in the US either, just like you don’t see many ICE Hummers.

The hybrid city bus that elicits much praise and no hand wringing from the same people who decry the electric hummer is far harsher on the roads.

If the road can handle the bus it won't notice the hummer.

The electric hummer is going to be in the same weight ballpark as a loaded plumber's van. It's really a non-issue. Even if the is only built to handle infrequent medium duty truck traffic (some very small rural back road) vehicles of 10k or less are of no consequence.

As long as the number of hummers is small, I don't think it's a problem. As more electric, heavy vehicles come on the road, road maintenance may not keep pace. A lot of county and rural roads have very low maintenance until heavy vehicles constantly drive up and down them. Regarding an electric bus, more people who might otherwise drive a shitty old car would ride in a bus if we're available. Each of those people isn't driving a 1-4 ton vehicle on the road. The net benefit of buses are greater than hummers. I doubt we'll adapt to electric cars fast enough anyways to avoid 3+ degrees of warming.

And damage to roads scales with the fourth power of axle-weight. The golf and the hummer have the same number of axles, so the hummer does ~106 times as much damage as the golf.

And your standard UPS truck weighs twice as much again as the Hummer. So does 16x as much damage - and there are plenty more of those on the road than there ever will be hummers.

The Hummer EV is a halo car, meant to catch the attention of a segment of the market and will sell in very limited quantities.

BTW The Ford F-350 starts at around 2.5 tons curb weight so this Hummer is not without precedent. This kind of vehicle is meant to look big and imposing to project a certain image.

(Edit:as Kobe-systems mentioned, I mangled the conversion on the F-350 weight. Corrected)

F-350s, those have many uses, among them, tow trucks, utility trucks/service trucks, boat towing, etc. I suppose some people use them as their daily driver, but I doubt that's the majority of the fleet.

> I suppose some people use them as their daily driver, but I doubt that's the majority of the fleet.

I agree. There are, of course, a few people that drive an HD truck as a daily, but it's not the majority by any means. They make awful daily drivers. Very thirsty, bouncy, steers like an aircraft carrier, etc. But for towing, they're pretty great.

You would be surprised. My Ram 2500 has coil spring suspension, and rides better than most sedans. And gets better mileage than my early 2000’s midsize truck. But yeah, the Subaru is much cheaper per mile to drive.

In the case of the F-350, it’s about towing and load capacity.

Sure, you want to project a certain image, but you might also need to tow Very Large Objects.

This is definitely not the case for the Hummer, which has less tow capacity than an F-150.

The F-350 starts at a 5,677 lbs curb weight. [0]

Which is ~2.8 US tons, or ~2.6 metric tons.

The heaviest possible configuration is 8,587 lbs, which is still "only" 3895 kg, or 3.9 metric tons.

[0]: https://www.ford.com/trucks/super-duty/models/f350-xlt/

Correct. I was looking at a source that put it just under 6000 pounds and did a goofball swap to tons. I do know that a ton is 2000 pounds but somehow it came out wrong.

>This kind of vehicle is meant to look big and imposing to project a certain image.

Actually modern trucks got so big to get around Obama-era fuel efficiency standards.

I can't speak for Europe, but I see that container trucks are already a significant fraction of America's highways. I can't imagine a few electric Hummers will make much difference.

The difference is a lot of trucks are only allowed on designated truck routes as they damage roads. Even then the most destroyed roads in my city are the ones where these heavy vehicles literally work ruts into the asphalt. Not to mention its the state that maintains a lot of highways vs local government for local roads, and one is more fit to regularly repair roads than the other.

Highways are one thing, but local city streets/roads are not built to the same integrity.

I imagine the pressure exerted by the smaller form factor vehicle will be significantly greater though...

On a pneumatic tire vehicle ground pressure is approximately tire pressure. The hummer will probably have some E-rated truck tire at like 50-60psi which is about what a panel van can be expected to have. Larger trucks are going to run higher pressures, 90-120 or so.

18 wheels is the difference

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