There is the idea going around that electric vehicles are an efficient and inexpensive alternative to gas-powered vehicles. With the price of gas soaring in the past year and pressure to find an “eco-friendly” alternative to gas cars, electric vehicles are promoted as the future of driving.
But one man illustrated that the reality is much more complicated when he posted a video on YouTube showing how much it costs to charge a Hummer EV.
On Nov. 10, Kyle Conner, who runs the YouTube channel Out of Spec Reviews, posted a video in which he revealed the cost of charging the Hummer EV Edition 1 from zero to 100 percent.
The video was titled “You Won’t Believe How Much It Costs To Charge The Hummer EV” — and that is accurate.
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No, your eyes did not deceive you.
Charging the vehicle’s 200-kWh battery using the basic rack rate from Electrify America cost $96.32 — and that is without the taxes, which can bring the total price to over $100, Conner said.
“It’s the first production EV, passenger EV, that cost more than $100 to charge zero to full,” he said.
Yes, you can get a lower rate by buying an Electrify America Pass, but it still costs about $70 to charge the car, and you need to pay $4 per month for a pass.
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It does get significantly less expensive when you get to per-minute charging, but the total cost still hovers around $40 without taxes and fees.
This is not the first test to show the high cost of charging the Hummer EV. In August, Car and Driver’s Testing Hub reported that an 80 percent charge of the vehicle cost $81, including tax, so a zero to 100 percent would run more than $100.
This is on top of the purchase price for the vehicle itself.
The Hummer EV usually costs around $100,000, and with the high demand and low supply, some people have paid more than $200,000 to get their hands on one.
Then you have to start considering the maintenance costs. It can cost over $8,000 to replace the taillights, and if you have to replace the battery, that can run $30,000.
Clearly, the Hummer EV is mostly a toy for the rich. The average person could never afford those expenses.
But electric vehicles overall are out of the reach of many Americans. According to Kelley Blue Book, the average price of a new EV in August was a whopping $66,524.
Combine that with the maintenance expenses and the surprisingly high price of a recharge, and it’s clear that electric vehicles aren’t the money-savers that President Joe Biden and other Democrats claim they are.
