0-60 miles per hour in three seconds, 1,000 horsepower, and…and I’m quoting the press release here…11,500 foot/pounds of torque. Those are the figures currently released for the GMC Hummer EV pickup truck that will be revealed in full on May 20, 2020 at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. And in case you missed it, it’s called “Hummer”…as in the brand that got dragged behind the building and shot as General Motors was being skewered alive for what the company had come to represent by the middle-2000s: oversized, cartoonish fuel-guzzling squared-off SUVs and a genuinely oversized military working machine that was tarted up and sold to those who could afford to look like they kept a war trophy from Desert Storm.

I’ve made no secret that I am not a fan of the original HMMWV/H1 series, mainly due to the powertrain. The Duramax/Allison powerplant that was fitted to H1 Alpha models is ideal…anybody else who owned, drove or rode in one of the 6.2 or 6.5 powered machines has a better grasp of why I wasn’t that big of a fan…a rattly diesel that was simply “adequate” and gearing low enough to cart it around off-road like a boss added up to the equivalent of driving a school bus that should’ve had a .50 cal mount for the kids to play in. Instead, you got a four-seater wagon that could park on the music teacher’s Prizm at the loudest possible volume. And don’t get me started on H2s or H3s that have been squatted, straight-piped, or kitted out with a list of other obnoxious modifications. I miss Pontiac, but I was not sad to see Hummer go.

But why bring the name back in the first place? Hummer dealerships were targets for the Earth Liberation Front and other eco-terror like-minded folk because of their fuel economy. The brand itself has since had a punchline to it of being the gargantuan sport-utility that earns the owner Christmas cards from OPEC every year. For this new vehicle, it’s not a brand, it’s a model, an upscale, all-electric GMC. Fair enough, since Hummer was positioned to be upscale…or at least, that was General Motors’ hope…when it was in production. But why an electric truck?

Honestly, it feels like a knee-jerk reaction to several EV pickups being rushed to market: the Rivian R1T, the Lordstown Motors Endurance (the re-branded Workhorse EV pickup that has been in development for a minute now) and the Tesla Cybertruck, which is apparently not a joke after all. And it feels like GM is trying to play the trump game in order to kickstart some sales. Look at those power figures: 1,000 horsepower and a torque rating that could easily be measured in short ton-force instead of foot-pounds. You might as well get Christopher Lloyd to bark out the power figures while holding the remote control he used to drive the DeLorean Time Machine around Hill Valley Mall with during the unveiling.

Is this GM’s apology for Hummer from the past? Is a GMC wearing the Hummer name like a badge of honor, with enough power to haul around this overwhelming need to beat Elon at his own game, going to be the perfect apology to green-thinkers who believe that Hummer was proof that General Motors didn’t care when they needed to? Tesla proved that the electric car can be somewhat viable and certainly proved that it didn’t have to be a thin-skinned penalty box or restricted to a five-block radius to work. That’s fine and fair. But will any of these upcoming EV pickups be able to make that same magic happen, or are these simply addressing the truck and SUV fetish of American consumers who feel guilty every time they fill up at the pump? I honestly can’t wait to see one way or another.

I also can’t wait for the litany of “electric Hummer” jokes to start rolling in.