America! Truck Yeah! 2023 Ford F-150 Raptor R vs. GMC Hummer EV 3X
A 1,000-hp EV and a 700-hp gas-guzzler find common ground in the outrageous.
It wasn't enough for America to land humans on the moon. We had to send cars, too. Two years after Neil Armstrong's giant leap, astronauts David Scott and Jim Irwin took an epic drive in a $10 million buggy that looked like a pair of lawn chairs bolted to a VW Beetle floorpan. Topping out at 11.2 mph and never straying beyond walking distance from the lander, the Lunar Roving Vehicle embodied that treasured American value that we still hold dear today: Why walk when you can drive?
The LRV was star-spangled American ingenuity at its best—wildly imaginative and slightly irrational. The same spirit lives on in the Ford F-150 Raptor R and the GMC Hummer EV 3X. Who needs a street-legal Stadium Super Truck or an electric car that's less efficient than a Prius? The same people who needed to drive on the moon, that's who!
The 700-hp F-150 Raptor R and the 1,000-hp Hummer EV are the new halo cars in pickup-loving 'Murica. They exist to win the hearts and minds of enthusiasts with shock-and-awe campaigns built on furious acceleration, unholy noise, drive-anywhere capability, and immense physical presence.
Despite looking nothing alike and running on different fuels, the Raptor R and Hummer EV are natural competitors. The GMC makes 43 percent more power than the Ford, but it weighs 9,016 pounds, which is a whopping 49 percent heavier than the Raptor R. That means the weight-to-power ratios of the two trucks are within spitting distance. They're also priced similarly, with the Raptor R tested here costing $112,395 to the Hummer EV 3X's $117,435. And thanks to its massive 205-kWh battery pack, the Hummer EV travels a gas-like 310 miles in our MotorTrend Road-Trip Range test using 95 percent of a full charge at a constant 70 mph.
3…2…1…Launch!
Of course, no one buys a Raptor R or Hummer to blend in and flow with traffic. A chance to drive one of these trucks should always start with a gratuitous full-throttle launch, so that's where we'll begin, too.
The Hummer gets your heart thumping before it even moves. Double-tapping the stability control button to activate its Watts to Freedom mode causes the driver's seat to vibrate and the speakers to emit a low thrum, giving you a sense of just how much power you're about to unleash. Standing on both pedals turns up the volume, ratcheting up the anticipation. Release the brake, and WTF mode works exactly as advertised. Without so much as a peep from the tires, the 9,000-pound brute points its schnoz at the clouds and scorches to 60 mph in 3.1 seconds—faster than you can unload your full vocabulary of four-letter words. Put a swear jar for your passengers in a cupholder, and you could cover the monthly payments on this truck.
The Raptor R might not launch as hard, but the experience is just as sensational without resorting to special effects. Ford's Predator V-8 idles with a deep and purposeful grumble that builds to a fierce growl when you hold the throttle against the brakes. Let the monster off the chain, and the Raptor R roars to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds, a performance that only feels tame if you've just stepped out of the Hummer.
The F-150's responses are so immediate and unrelenting that you'll never look at a turbocharged car the same way after experiencing the Raptor's 640 lb-ft of torque and 700 horsepower. Its 5.2-liter V-8 is the best argument we've ever heard for why all performance cars should be supercharged. Even from a 70-mph roll in top gear, the Raptor leaps forward before you've even registered that it's downshifted.
And yet the Hummer still manages to catch it sleeping thanks to the inherent advantages of its electric powertrain. For decades we've written about turbo lag—how it spoils the human-machine connection and whether an engine has a little or a lot. As EVs and gas vehicles increasingly mingle, expect to hear similar riffs on throttle lag as drivers become more attuned to how combustion engines hesitate as air fills the manifolds.
The Hummer's three motors and single-speed transmissions eliminate all the slack inherent in using an eight-piston air pump and a 10-speed transmission to accelerate three tons of mass. The GMC's 0.8-second lead at 60 mph grows to nearly two seconds at 100 mph, although the Ford has started clawing back time when the Hummer crosses the quarter-mile mark in 11.6 seconds at 111.9 mph. The Raptor R follows in 12.3 seconds at 111.5 mph.
