The age of the electric overlander is before us, and early signs of what lies ahead seem phenomenal. Overlanding vehicle specialists EarthCruiser have unveiled a production-spec slide-in camper for the titanic GMC Hummer EV, and it looks absolutely wicked. Not only does this fully-featured camper have great styling, it gets its own battery pack, a properly-sized bed, and is made of some pretty cool stuff to keep the truck underneath it happy.
Although the Hummer EV is a 9,063-pound leviathan, it has a relatively low payload capacity of 1,300 pounds. For context, the Ford Maverick offers 1,500 pounds of payload capacity. This means there isn’t a ton of wiggle room for excess camper weight. With the 13.5-gallon freshwater and seven-gallon grey water tanks both fully filled, a situation that should rarely happen, this thing’s hauling 170.97 pounds of water. As for on-board power, the camper uses its own 6.0 kWh 12-volt lithium-ion battery pack so owners don’t deplete their Hummers’ driving range while out on the trails simply by running appliances. Let’s be super conservative and assume a relatively low battery bank power density of 90 Wh/kg, typical of some lithium iron phosphate batteries. Even with this ballpark, you’d only be looking at around 147 pounds of max weight for the six-kWh 12-volt battery bank. Deduct the weight of two 160-pound passengers, and everything else needs to weigh less than 662 pounds or so. Not an insurmountable challenge, but not an easy one either.
So, how do you fashion a camper light enough to be hauled by something with little more than a half-ton of payload? Well, carbon fiber certainly helps. The woven composite is used in this camper’s walls and pop-up top, cutting weight while maintaining strength. That aforementioned pop-up top also helps because flexible textiles are often lighter than insulated hard paneling. Of course, pop-up construction can also get a sweet cross-breeze going, a must for summer camping.
The aforementioned 6.0-kWh lithium-ion 12-volt battery bank is fed by a 605-watt solar array and pumps power through a 1,500-watt inverter, perfect for cooking without running down the vehicle’s battery pack. Considering the array of appliances onboard, it’s necessary. Not only will owners be treated to an induction cooktop, there’s also a fridge/freezer inside this overlanding rig. Perfect for a trailside cornetto. In addition to the expected sink, an indoor-outdoor shower and a flat-pack toilet should take care of most hygiene concerns, while a full-size RV-spec bed should make for comfy accommodations. But wait, what if you have things, and perhaps also stuff? Where in this minimalist interior are you expected to stow all the gear you need for a week on the trail? Fear not, there’s hidden storage under the bed and, for the stuff you’ll use less often, lockable storage compartments on the outside of the camper.
Of course, should you wish your camping to be of the glam variety, there are hookups included for water and power, which means this nearly five-ton American behemoth should fit in at RV parks from California to the Carolinas. After all, what’s more American than a Hummer RV? If you happen to own a GM pickup truck with a battery pack heavier than an entire Honda Civic Si, EarthCruiser should be delivering the first Hummer campers in 2024, a quick turnaround time for something so radical. It should go without saying that T-top operation may be affected, but given the amenities this slide-in camper adds, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
(Photo credits: EarthCruiser)
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I saw a video of a guy breaking one on his first drive, there was a small drop on the dirt road and that was that. This stupid thing can’t even take its own weight offroading, let alone any payload.
*shrug* undrivable in Europe without a commercial vehicle driving licence since it’s over 3.5 metric tons.
More like EarthCrusher, amirite?
My EU colleagues get such a laugh when they find out the GVWR listed on drivers licenses in North America.
They have succeeded at making the Hummer NOT a mall crawler, but only because it won’t fit in the parking garage with the camper installed.
I hate everything about it. You should be required to get a CDL to drive it on public roads.
But will it survive a couple dudes from Donut Media driving it up a hill?
Nothing can survive that.
What an unbelievably pathetic vehicle. Weighs 10,000lbs but has a hilariously low payload. Has a battery big enough to power a house for a week, but is so inefficient it needs even more batteries to power the camper.
Quick math says that 6kwhr (which is a LOT for a camper) nets you about 5 miles range of you had to use it to power the car. Our you could cook for 4 hours straight on full power. The good news is that if you could get all 680 Watts of solar you go an extra mile every hour. It’s not going to get you much further down the road but it’s not nothing and it may get you back to town.
A mile every hour that you’re getting sun. The general rule of thumb for that is that you get the equivalent of 5 hours of full panel output on a sunny day, so… 5 miles a day. Yeah, not nothing, but you’re gonna want a deployable array much bigger than the roof to really benefit. Which.. will probably eat too much of the pitiful payload.
I like the bedspread design
Looks nice. Stupidly expensive, but nice.
THe problem is the Cargo Carrying capacity of which the passengers count towards.
A couple of people their half used box of tissues will be nice in the wild 🙂
This is for wealthy people who aspire to #overland, but don’t actually understand it. Good luck winching this 5-ton wedding cake of a truck out of a rut.
they don’t actually do it either. So no worries on the off road recovery bills.
This is for those driving to tracks like Limerock and camping all weekend long. Then happily back to Darien or Greenwich.
You can even tow your race car! Or, well, maybe you could if it had the payload of a truck instead of a 2-row SUV.
Went for a bicycle ride on some trails and spied a Ford Flex (AWD model, at least) stuck in the mud and left overnight for a tow.
Some people haven’t any idea what they’re getting into.
I want to hate all things Hummer EV, carbon fiber, or just plain ludicrously expensive. But I can’t because this is a beautiful design and provides the first proper use for a Hummer EV.