I may be simple but with electric cars in general I always wonder how the electricity is produced. Actually, I have a fair clue.

Also, cars looks bad in terms of production and raw materials cost, and the bigger, well, you get the idea.

Bottom line is form matters not when figuring out how to "feel" about things like this. It's a simple question; Is it efficient? 100MPG says "yeah, it is." I don't care if it's stuffed into a jet that taxis down the street. And neither should you.

It's a plug-in device, so comparing the raw MPG to a Prius is more than a little disingenuous. When it's plugged into the wall, the power that it's consuming is only as green as the utility that is generating that juice.

I think there is a bit more than just fuel economy here. Sure that is nice, but all the other 'big greedy and unnecessarily large' things apply.
Not only do they use more materials, weigh enough to actually damage most streets and scare the living crap out of anyone in a sub-compact or motorcycle, but just think of how efficient it would be in something the size of a mini.
If you have a family of 4 that tows a boat, and frequent off road situations, then yeah, its great- otherwise...

Materials? Production costs? An all metal car is much easier and cost efficient to recycle than the fiberglass / plastic skateboards that have a lower initial cost. Not to mention the VOCs from the fiberglass and plastic forming. If you're going to honest in your ecological analysis, you need to consider product lifetime AND recycling at the end.

A hummer isn't just one model of car, there are several! The H3 - yes I have one - gets better miilage then most of neighbors crossovers, 4x4's. and others....having said that I do think the H2 is horrible unless you absolutely need a tank where you live. I'll take the H3 plugin anyday thoe I live in the country so it's not like the gass milage is that much more.

Too bad hummers can't run on hippies, two problems solved at once.

Greedy is just another way to say "I'm jealous". And last I checked, America is a free country, as are many others, so people can drive what ever the hell they want. If you don't like what they are driving, make something they want more.

I'd be better off where I live with a much smaller vehicle, but there IS something kinda kewl about a tank that gets 100mpg. I mean, check out these retired folk who finally get a chance to go around the countryside in their 100mpg RV with this kind of thinking in mind. Hummer? I dunno, but the practicality of the issue and potential benefit itself is not lost on me.

Too bad vehicles can't run on enviro-terrorists, it would solve two problems at once.

Greedy is just another way of saying "I'm jealous."

"Not only do they use more materials, weigh enough to actually damage most streets and scare the living crap out of anyone in a sub-compact or motorcycle, but just think of how efficient it would be in something the size of a mini."

They are also a lot safer. Plus anyone who actually thinks a Prius is 'green' needs to do some research on how difficult it is to dispose of these types of vehicles.

A smaller vehicle will always have better gas mileage period. It's all about the mass. The aerodynamics of the H3 are terrible, but the unnecessary mass of the vehicle consumes lost of energy. If they are being honest about the energy cost of this vehicle they would give you mpe (miles per energy). I did a little research on this car, it has a 4 cylinder engine for when you drive more than 40 miles between battery plug-ins. The engine is used only to charge the battery. If you only count the gas you use for a trip, but not the plug in energy, you get a low mpg. We're so used to thinking of the gas as the only source of energy for transportation. That has to change when we get plug-ins.

Also it's not safer. Mass does not equal safety. A small vehicle with good crumple-zone design and many airbags is safe. Not saying the H3 can't be safe, just that it isn't inherently safer than a smaller car.

http://jalopnik.com/5219773/100-mpg-electric-hummer-h3-doesnt-actually-get-100-mpg

"For the first sixty miles the Raser Hummer runs in all EV mode and from there it will run on a constantly operating generator, resulting in an asymptotic decline in average fuel economy. It does get the dramatic 100 MPG fuel economy the company claims — as long as you don't go further than 60 miles in a day. The actual, long-range economy is a less headline-grabbing 33 MPG."

How much would your electric bill go up each month if your plugging that thing into your wall every night? My guess is it would skyrocket.

Other than that it sounds and looks like a great deal to me!

Great news but, you misspelled, 'mileage'. ;)

I guess it's better than nothing, considering Americans will never quit being idiots when it comes to cars. The rest of the world gets it, but hey, everything bigger must be better!
Smaller cars are a better solution for the environment, they are safe, they are practical, and - using the same technology, run laps around this piece of crap.
The only person who needs a monster like this is someone with a 2" dick. Get over yourself and start thinking about the greater good for a change.

I think the point of the technology is beyond the specific vehicle they chose to use for their experimental model. It is essentially like an electric diesel train except that trains don't use battery packs. The point of the technology is providing higher fuel efficiency for larger vehicles.

As far as environmental issues, batteries are toxic. They are toxic to produce, and they require special handling for disposal (which includes recycling).

Using small vehicles if fine, but why limit yourself to only small cars that are fuel efficient? To simply dismiss full sized vehicles such as trucks and vans because they are not as fuel efficient as smaller cars is asinine. You cannot use a Prius or other small vehicle to haul stuff around in when a truck is much easier.

As to the safety issue, it is true that larger vehicles are not necessarily safer when it comes to accidents. **BUT** that is only for collisions between other vehicles. A larger vehicle *is* safer in collisions that deal with "immovable" objects like trees, center dividers, etc. Crumple zones are very good at displacing the collision energy away from the vehicle, but you still need more mass to absorb the larger impulsive forces produced when striking a very solid object as described above. Larger vehicles also yield larger crumple zones.

With that said, for me, if someone wants a small, fuel-sipping (or purely electric) vehicle, I have no problem with that. If someone wants to buy a bigger vehicle that is not quite as efficient, that's fine too. Let's leave people the choice to decide which they want and not categorically dismiss other people just because they don't agree with your political views.

Everyone who thinks this H3 gets 100 mpg should be placed 999 miles inside the Sahara desert with the vehicle and ten(10) galllons of gas. Next day we'll see who's driven out.

The only time that humans stop being normally idiotic is when they begin to berate other humans for being idiotic, at which point they become extraordinarily idiotic. You may take this as a case in point if you like.

hey guys, you do realize that not everyone uses a vehicle to carry only them-selves to a farmers market on the weekend. some people actually need there vehicle to be able to carry/haul stuff. for some prius is just not the right tool for the job they need to do with there vehicle. and i for one really like the way the the H3 looks, but this is a matter fo taste.

Ha! That was a very funny parody of someone refusing to realize that it isn't the mileage that a car gets that matters to them, but the social status of the owner. The lack of awareness of their own need to feel superior to the "greedy" "selfish people", defined only as they see it. A real knee slapper.

Huh... wasteful? The tech industry is the biggest producer of waste and consumer of energy. I wouldn't be going around pointing fingers at other industries if I were a techie.

Imagine how many tons of electronic waste is produced when a new operating system makes a computer obsolete... all in the name of profits. Or how a new gaming system makes other gadgets less cool. Come on... The Hummer is more green than anything in the tech industry. And as a pre-retort, I'll believe you when San Fran has solar panels or windmills on all their buildings.

Greedy, selfish? Really? Maybe you should look in the mirror.

I put my wife and kids in the hummer because I'd like them to survive a run in with your wife and kids. Mine will drive home yours can be scooped up, prius and all, and buried.

karpet: Well done, spoken like a true American idiot. Thanks, but perhaps you can go represent another someone else. You know, I am a good percentage Cherokee, I want a percentage of my land back. Its a free country right? And in my newly found, ransacked and pillaged property, ill dump arsenic in my rivers and seed my sky with sulfuric acids, cause, you know, its a free country. Who wouldn't be jealous of that? Oh and @ Crowne, very classy, I only hope my kids can grow up to be half as awesome as you. gth

Scoop, buy an official tank - say M1 Abrams w/ 2miles/gal. - so your bankruptcy will free the world of further proliferation.

It goes 43 miles on a charge with 3 LI batteries. No idea about the performance. No idea about the speed, and you're sure not going to haul a boat anywhere.
Silly.

Electricity is somewhat dirty.
However, it is produced in places that can somewhat control the pollution by processing the waste. Also,
when you plug something in, they dont throw in more coal. Electricity always has a surplus, so you could plug in many electric cars, hundreds of thousands, before they would need to ramp up electricity production. Also, electric cars are plugged in mostly in the evening, when there is less strain on the grid.
Givin the fact that just about every building in the US has electricity, it makes sense to go electric with cars, and not hybrid of silliest of all, hydrogen. You could charge them everwhere. Condisder that there are far more electrical outlets than gas stations.
-Randy

Somone commented that large cars don't equate into safety, due to the better crumble characteristics of the little cars. I hate to brust your bubble, that crumble zone stuff is good if you have an impact of 35 mph or less. Over 35 mph, EMS will be wiping you up with a sponge, off whatever you hit. The trouble with small vehicles is over crowding in the passenger compartment. If you pact that Mini Coup and someone hits you at 35 mph, there is going to be a lot of serious injuries, especially if it is a rear impact, in which case you looking a catestrophic injuries or death. Statically, the larger, heavier vehicles survive collisions better than smaller vehicles, in all situations. When you consider that you would need more vehicles to carry the same number of people and/or cargo, and the fact that the mini's have virtually no cargo space, thus it means more trips traveled or paying a delivery service, which still means you have used x number of extra fuel to get your package to its destination, so you soon find they no as economic either. If it take 2 Mini Coopers to get the same number of people to a specific destination as it take one Chevy Tahoa or Grand Caravan, you have to divide the gas milage of the Mini Cooper by the number of Mini Coopers it takes to get the passgers to the destination and then compare it to the Tahoa or Caravan. While the cars are lighter, they still contribute to road congestion, wear and tear on the road ways.

When all variable are compared equally, this 100 mpg Hummer, it a giant step in the right direction... we aren't where we need to be quite yet, as what we want is a 100+ mpg vehicle that never has to be plugged in and has a 300 to 400+ mile range per load of fuel, that still has the power of the 12 mpg Hummer H1 and the room to accomidate 7 passengers for us rural drivers, the city drivers can use the suit-case size cars if they like, but it should be the choice of the driver/owner.

Frankly don't car what Europe drives or any one else in the world, as they backwards for the most part!

SUVs and trucks are the number one selling vehicle in America. Unlike the Volt and other hybrid cars we didn’t have to build an entire car around the battery packs. There was plenty of room in the back of the Hummer to install them, and they don’t affect the ground clearance of the vehicle.

And now for "the rest of the story…"

How do these guys at Raser come up with their 100 MPG? Simple, they claim that if you drive 60 miles per day that the first 40 is powered by electricity and the next 20 is provided by their 33 MPG onboard engine. Therefore, only 1/3 of the distance traveled was provided by gas at 33 MPG, so it's as though you got the equivalent of 3 times 33 MPG, which equals 100 MPG.

Now let's see what Raser isn't telling you. First, their 200KW electric motor costs MONEY to operate! How much, you ask? Easy. If you drive 40 miles on electric power -- half in the city and half on the freeway -- you will spend about 1 hour driving (20 miles @ 30 MPH = 40 minutes, plus 20 miles @ 60 MPH = 20 minutes). Raser's 200KW motor is rated at 100KW continuous, so 1 hour of driving will likely consume roughly 100KWH worth of electricity (100KW times 1 hour). The average cost of electricity in the U.S. is 11.5 cents/KWH; therefore 100KWH costs you $11.50, got it? That's eleven dollars and fifty cents to go forty miles!!! Luckily, you get to go the next 20 miles on good old gasoline @ roughly 33 MPG, which would consume 6/10ths of a gallon of gas if the gas engine powered the vehicle directly. Unfortunately, it first has to power a generator, which then charges batteries, which then powers the electric motor. Still, lets be generous and assume that this gas engine takes you 20 miles on 2/3 of a gallon of gas, which costs $1.67 (2/3 times $2.50).

So the grand total to travel 60 miles in Raser's shiny EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicle) only cost you $13.17!!! Isn't that great? Of course, you would've only spent $5.00 if you could've driven all of that distance powered by their good gas-mileage IC engine. Or you could've paid $7.50 in any vehicle that averaged 20 MPG. However, where's the fun in that? Look, you're driving a high tech "EREV"... ooooh! One that cost you an extra $25K, and that added an extra 1,000 pounds of weight to the vehicle. Nice extras, huh?? BTW, did I forget to mention that their 100KW motor only provides 134HP in continuous mode? But wait you say, it gives 268HP at peak operation. Yes, that's about what the new Ford Taurus provides (except for the Ford Taurus SHO, which gives 350HP). So you'll be riding around in your new EREV Hummer in a reduced 134-268HP powertrain... can you say "put, put, put"?

Does anyone see anything wrong with this?? Now do you see why Raser omitted mentioning the cost of electricity and only focused on their fuzzy-math MPG gas equivalent calculation? In reality, at today's prices, their Hummer only got the equivalent of 11.4 MPG ($13.17 divided by $2.5/gallon = 5.27 gallons, and 60 miles/5.27 gallons = 11.4 MPG)!!!!!!!!

The fact is that electric vehicles have NOTHING to offer in solving America's transportation needs. They are not cost-efficient nor are they technologically superior. The demand for electricity in the U.S. is expected to grow by a taxing 25% over the next decade. Raser's Hummer draws 100KWH of electricity in order to travel it's first 40 miles, which is well over 3 times the power that your house draws in a complete day! Talk about an instant energy crisis! It's a good thing that battery technology is still limited and that they added an IC engine to extend the range, otherwise their Hummer would've used 150KWH of electricity, or more than 5 times the daily draw of an average home!!

This conveniently omitted information might explain why Raser has also entered the geothermal power market… they realize that switching to EV's would require well over a 300% + increase to America's annual electric power consumption.

My question is this, why couldn't Raser be upfront and honest with us about the true costs of Electric Vehicles? Afterall, consumers have shown that they are willing to pay more for efficient green power.

Could their hesitancy in telling us the whole story be due to the fact that EV's are neither cost-efficient nor green compared to standard IC engine technology?