General Motors Co. showed its much-anticipated battery-powered Hummer pickup in an online video, spearheading the automaker’s renewed push into the electric-vehicle market. The 2022 model-year truck will have a starting price of $80,000 and a range of 350 miles when fully charged. GM will sell it at GMC brand dealerships once production starts in the fall of 2021, the automaker said late Tuesday.
The GMC Hummer’s driving range is about the same as Tesla Inc.’s Model 3, and the truck’s zero-to-60 miles per hour acceleration in three seconds is equivalent to a gasoline-powered sports car.
With the new truck, GM is seeking to retain its traditional strength in pickups. To help recover the extra costs of making the EV Hummer, GM will initially focus on top-of-the-line models that sell for more than $112,000. The company plans to bring 20 plug-in models to market globally by 2023 using its new Ultium battery pack.
“The GMC Hummer EV is revolutionary, defying what the industry thinks of as a pickup truck,” Duncan Aldred, vice president of Global Buick and GMC, said in a statement. While Tesla has taken a commanding lead in electric sedans and crossovers, GM is hoping to capture demand for EV pickups ahead of the competition. The Detroit automaker is reinventing the Hummer brand, which garnered a reputation as a gas-guzzling SUV at its peak more than a decade ago.
GMC partnered with Fortnite creator Epic Games to use the game maker’s Unreal Engine game development platform for the Hummer’s in-car software, an industry first. Because Unreal Engine is designed to enable photorealistic computer-generated graphics, the software can display full, high-resolution renders of the vehicle as well as its various internal and underside parts and mechanical and software mechanisms.
“The graphics are unbelievable,” GMC’s Brook said. “They’re very hard to describe, you really need to see them.”
“Any time I have any type of partnership, it’s always pretty simple,” James said of the endorsement deal, “anything that’s organic and then is something that I have a good deal of respect for.”
