2024 Tesla Cybertruck Beast vs. GMC Hummer EV 3X vs. Rivian R1T Quad Motor: Supertrucks Supercompared!

Three vehicles, 2,680 horsepower, 2,972 lb-ft of torque. It sounds like a hypercar comparison, at least until you get to the combined weight: eleven and a half tons. The Tesla Cybertruck Beast, the GMC Hummer EV 3X, and Rivian’s TOTY-winning R1T Quad Motor: These are the electric supertrucks, each one capable of towing a Dodge Charger Hellcat to the dragstrip, kicking its ass in the quarter mile, then towing it home. Er, provided track and home aren’t too far apart, that is.   

How best to compare these animals? These three trucks represent outrageous, over-the-top fun, so we decided to test them the way we’d test supercars, with a no-holds-barred handling run on some of our favorite roads. We’d meet in Westlake Village, California, then hop on the 101 freeway for a look-see at each truck’s automated driving features. Exit on Kanan Road, ride its big, fast sweepers through the hills and down to the ocean, then cruise west on Pacific Coast Highway. We’d turn inland on Route 23, Decker Canyon Road, one of the tightest and most challenging of Malibu’s canyon raceways. Cross Mulholland, drop down through one last set of twisties back to Westlake, then swap trucks and repeat. Then, if no one dies, have lunch and pick a winner. 

If this sounds like a ridiculously stupid exercise in ridiculous stupidity, good—you’re starting to understand what these trucks are all about. 

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Meet Our Super Contenders 

Let us quickly introduce our contestants. Tesla is represented by the three-motor, 845-hp, $99,990 Beast version of the inimitable Cybertruck, loaned to us by Out of Spec. Our test truck was a Foundation Series model, which upped the as-tested price to $119,990. The three-motor, 1,000-hp Hummer EV 3X is nearly as expensive, with a short list of options including a $9,995 extended-range battery, bringing its $106,945 base price up to $118,480. By comparison, the four-motor, 835-hp Rivian is a bargain: $87,000 for starters and $93,000 as it showed up to our comparison. 

We spent only a few minutes crawling around our competitors; we’ve already published our overall impressions (Tesla Cybertruck, Rivian R1T, Hummer EV Pickup, if you need a refresher). We had 2,700 electric horsepower and some incredible roads waiting for us, and we were ready to drive. 

Tesla Cybertruck: What Is Going on Here? 

The Tesla was easily the most intimidating because of its steer-by-wire system. For those unfamiliar, the Cybertruck’s rectangular “wheel” rotates just 0.9 turns lock to lock, with the actual steering response (from all four wheels) varying with driving conditions. Around town, we found the steering worked intuitively in all but low-speed parking lot turns, where the quickening of the ratio plus the lack of visibility to the sides meant we struggled to avoid clipping corners. Out on Kanan’s fast curves, the Cybertruck felt competent and confident, but our concern was how the steering would work on Decker Canyon’s sharp twisties. Given that it was released by the same company who gave us the misleadingly named and fault-prone (though improving) Full Self-Driving, we had good reason for concern. 

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Turns out steering wasn’t the Cybertruck’s problem, or at least not its biggest one. Sure, the steering felt a little funky, but it was (usually) predictable enough for fast driving—fast being the operative word, because the Tesla is the quickest truck here. Whether or not Beast mode is engaged, it has the same point-and-squirt power as the Rivian. Ramp up the speed, though, and the Beast falls apart. The grip disappears as if someone threw a switch. The steering loses its predictability in tight corners. The regenerative braking is good, but the friction brakes are terrible, with a long-travel pedal that feels like it’ll never grab the discs. (We did discover a useful hack for a tight turn: Turn the steering yoke hard to the stop and let the understeering front tires scrub off speed while the rears point the truck in the right direction.) 

While we made excellent progress in the Cyberbeast, achieving a pace we’d never expect from a pickup truck, we still felt like we could never get into a rhythm. The Cybertruck is a lot like the head of the company that makes it: One can never be entirely sure what it will do next. 

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Rivian R1T: This is How It’s Done 

Contrast that with the Rivian, which filled us with a sense of disbelief. How can a three-and-a-half-ton motherloving pickup truck drive so damn well? We know the answer, of course, because there’s a lot going on under the Rivian’s skin: four-motor drive (and the instant torque vectoring such a setup provides), a fancy cross-linked hydraulic suspension that keeps the contact patches on the ground, and of course a decent set of relatively low-profile street tires, which provide grip and response at the expense of ride quality. Even with that knowledge, not to mention a year of living with an R1T, its raw skill filled us with wonder. 

The Rivian is the hypercar of this group. We made stunningly quick progress through Decker Canyon, rocketing from corner to corner and mastering each turn in a way we never imagined a pickup truck could. The steering has great feel, precision, and predictability. The chassis has the poise and control of a ballet dancer. The friction brakes are the best here, which we know because we found ourselves outside the bounds of what the regenerative brake could do—not because there’s a problem with the system but because we were driving so damn fast. One of the judges likened the R1T to a Range Rover Sport SVR, and that’s as good a comparison as any. The Rivian is the best-handling truck here by such a large margin it’s barely a competition. 

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GMC Hummer EV: You Don’t Have to Be Good to Have a Good Time 

By contrast, the Hummer was arguably the worst-handling truck here. Unlike the Rivian and the Tesla, the Hummer drives like a pickup truck, with slow, ponderous steering and low-grip Tonka truck tires shrieking like preteens on a haunted hayride, and at similarly modest speeds. The chassis does show remarkable composure—considering the 9,000-pound curb weight, its body motions are quite well controlled—but keeping up with the Rivian wasn’t going to happen. Hell, just pacing the Cybertruck meant flailing one’s arms and legs like a mad conductor leading the orchestra through a furtive passage of Brahms during an earthquake. 

Still, one word kept popping up in everyone’s notes: fun. We bumbled our way through Decker Canyon with huge grins plastered to our faces, a couple of us even laughing out loud as we careened around the corners. We were still smiling as we pulled into the parking lot, and then, as if to give a final flourish to its performance, the Hummer’s four-wheel steering pulled us into a parking space as sharply as a Honda Fit. One of the great forms of comedy is elevation to the absurd, and that is exactly what the Hummer does. This is big, stupid, hold-my-beer-and-watch-this fun, and it elicited a joy that not even the super-skilled Rivian could bring us. To paraphrase the great British auto writer L.J.K. Setright, it is more fun to drive an oversized, overweight, sloppy-steering electric pickup fast than to drive a four-motor insanely skilled electric pickup slow.  

Picking Our Winner 

We planned an hour for deliberations; turns out that wasn’t enough. The merits (and demerits) of these supertrucks were obvious, but on what parameters should we pick a winner? Do we judge them like pickup trucks? Like supercars? Like silly-money showpieces? No one set of parameters felt exactly right, and the trucks were so different, it was hard to compare like for like. In the end, we wound up dumping our impressions on the table like a giant Lego set then picking up the pieces and seeing how they fit together. 

Tesla Cybertruck Beast: Is It Just a Novelty? 

After much back and forth, we put the Tesla Cybertruck in third place. Its polarizing styling makes it seem like a one-trick pony, which is a shame, because it really isn’t; the technology here has some great potential, particularly the steer-by-wire system, which is quite artfully done but needs further development. It’s the quickest truck here by far despite being down on power compared to the others (and on motor count compared to the Rivian), and it has the biggest bed with the highest payload. Compared to other Tesla models, its interior feels more like sci-fi whimsy and less like cost-cutting minimalism. The Cybertruck really does feel like a pickup from the future. 

Still, it struggles to hide its shortcomings. The Tesla’s range is the shortest here, and its unimpressive turning circle means it doesn’t put its four-wheel steering to good use the way the Hummer does. The driving experience never really gels like it does in the Rivian. We know Tesla’s Autopilot doesn’t work as well as GM’s Super Cruise (and don’t get us started on so-called FSD), but we couldn’t even try it on the Cybertruck because Tesla hasn’t finished writing the software. And just a few days with the Tesla showed us that stainless-steel body is going to be an absolute nightmare to live with; you can’t use hot water to clean it, fingerprints multiply like lecherous rabbits, and you must immediately clean off any bugs on the body panels to avoid damaging the finish. Sure, the Tesla is arguably the most novel truck here, but once the novelty wears off, what do you have? Tesla fanatics will no doubt treasure the Beast, but it feels to us like the Christmas present we’ll tire of most quickly. 

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GMC Hummer EV 3X: Best or Worst? 

The GMC Hummer EV very nearly wound up dead last. It’s the worst pickup truck on account of having the smallest box and lowest cargo and towing capacities. It’s the heaviest and the least energy-efficient, has the clumsiest handling, and, as one cranks away at its slow steering while thinking about the Tesla’s trick tiller or the Rivian’s four-motor precision, it feels like a technological Luddite. 

But the Hummer also very nearly wound up in first place. It feels like it’s in on the joke. Who in their right mind expects it to be a great pickup truck? And of course, it’s not a Luddite; it has the best hands-free driving system (not just in the test but in the whole industry), the most effective four-wheel steering, and by far the best theatrics, especially when you engage its “Watts to Freedom” launch mode. Its removable roof panels make it a convertible, for crying out loud. And caning it through the curves just plain made us grin like no other truck here. The Hummer is Stephen King’s Billy Summers: a smart cookie that wants you to think it’s an idiot. In the end, we ranked it second, although if we were picking based on pure joy, the Hummer might well have won. 

Rivian R1T: Who Can Deny Excellence?

No one can deny the pure technological superiority of the Rivian. It isn’t the quickest on paper, but it sure as hell feels like it in the curves. The Rivian delivers a hypercar-like driving experience, plus we know from experience it tows and hauls better than its rivals even though its payload trails the Tesla. (If only Rivian made a long-bed version, it’d be the ideal work truck.) 

Okay, so maybe Rivian doesn’t do the truck-of-the-future thing as well as Tesla; the R1T’s goofy wide-eyed stare makes it look more like an extra in the Star Wars cantina than a vehicle out of the next Blade Runner movie. And compared to the Hummer, the Rivian really could stand to relax and let its hair down a little. Still, no vehicle here demonstrates the raw ability of an electric powertrain like the Rivian. Among three awesome supertrucks—we use that adjective very deliberately, as all three truly generate awe—the Rivian R1T is by far the most awesome, so it comes away with first place in our comparison test. It really is a super supertruck.

3rd Place: 2024 Tesla Cybertruck Beast 

Verdict: The truck of the future isn’t ready for the present. 

2nd Place: 2024 GMC Hummer EV 3X Pickup 

Verdict: Big, stupid fun rendered in an XXXL-size EV. 

1st Place: 2023 Rivian R1T Quad-Motor 

Verdict: Pickup truck? Supercar? The Rivian can serve both roles well.