General Motors is readying the announcement of an all-electric pickup truck that will carry the branding of the company’s infamous gas-guzzling Hummer, according to The Wall Street Journal. The new vehicle will reportedly be teased during a Super Bowl commercial starring LeBron James.
GM will sell the Hummer truck starting in 2022 under its GMC brand, and it isn’t expected to revive Hummer as a complete brand of its own, as it once was, according to the report. GM killed the Hummer brand in 2010 following the financial crisis, the automaker’s government bailout, and rising fuel costs. Representatives for GM and GMC declined to comment.
Rumors have swirled for months that GM was planning to revive the Hummer nameplate, likely for an electric vehicle. The company is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar push to release 20 new electric vehicles (across all of its global markets) by 2023, and it’s shown that it’s willing to take big chances in order to meet that goal. GM wanted to make an electric pickup truck with Rivian, but it was reportedly rebuffed after asking for exclusive rights to the Michigan-based EV startup’s tech. (Rivian has since struck a nonexclusive deal with Ford.) GM has also sold its shuttered factory in Lordstown, Ohio, to an electric truck startup called Lordstown Motors and is planning to build a $2.3 billion factory in the town in conjunction with LG’s battery division.
GM is reviving the Hummer at a time of skyrocketing SUV and pickup truck sales in the United States, fueled by reasonable gas prices, customer demand for things like higher seating position and a sense of security (in addition to utility), and the fact that automakers simply make more profit on these vehicles. That boom in SUV and truck sales has, unfortunately, had a human cost, though, in the form of a major jump in global CO2 emissions for the sector as well as a dramatic rise in pedestrian deaths. While an electric Hummer might help mitigate the former, it certainly wouldn’t do much to change the latter.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/10/21060568/gm-hummer-electric-pickup-revival-super-bowl-ad-lebron-james