GMC HUMMER EV Quiet Revolution Grille
A decade ago, in the wake of General Motors’ bankruptcy reorganization, the Hummer brand represented everything that many people considered was wrong with the automaker leading up to its collapse. Hummers were big, heavy, gas guzzling monsters in an era when it was looking like gas prices might be on a perpetual upward trend and everything was about to go electric. Today, gas is cheaper than it was in January 2010, electric vehicles represent barely more than 1% of sales and Hummer is officially coming back and it’s electric!
The last Hummer H3 rolled off the assembly line in Louisiana in May 2010. Sometime in the second half of 2021, Hummer will come back to life not as a brand, but as a model from GMC. The electric pickup truck that GM executives have been promising ever since their attempt to invest in Rivian fell through last year will be called the GMC Hummer EV.
The Hummer EV will get its national debut this Sunday with a TV commercial set to run during the second quarter of the Super Bowl. We won’t see the whole truck then, for that we’ll have to wait until May 20. What GM does plan to highlight during the football game are the attributes that they think justifies the name.
While the new Hummer won’t be the gas guzzler of old, it definitely looks like it will be earning its name in pretty much every other way. GM is promising 1,000-hp and 11,500 lb-ft of torque. If that latter number seems a bit outlandish, it’s almost certainly the torque at the wheels, not from the motor.
Even though EVs typically don’t have a full transmission, they do have a reduction gearset which in turn multiples the torque. For example a Tesla Model X has a final drive ratio of 8.28:1. Assuming something similar for the Hummer EV, that would translate to a bit less than 1,400 lb-ft at the motors which is probably in the right ballpark for motors putting out 1,000-hp.
For now, the only other spec GM is revealing is the 0-60 mph acceleration time of about 3 seconds. We’re clearly seeing the Tesla influence here because aside from some high-performance trucks of the past like the early 90s Syclone, GM only ever talks about payload and towing for trucks, not acceleration. Given these numbers, GM is no doubt targeting to exceed Tesla claim of 14,000-pounds of towing for the Cybertruck.
In addition to these big numbers, GM is also emphasizing the quiet nature of the Hummer of the Hummer in a series of teaser videos. There is very much a “speak softly and carry a big stick theme here,” kind of the opposite of the Tesla’s CEO.
Mark Reuss, General Motors president speaks at their Detroit- Hamtramck assembly plant on January … [+]
From a visual perspective all we will see this week is the grille which features a back-lit and stylized version of the old Hummer’s seven-slot grille. Based on the signage used as a backdrop during the announcement of GM’s plan to retool the Detroit Hamtramck assembly plant for EV production, we can probably also expect a relatively traditional pickup truck profile rather than the wild flat-plane triangular shape of the Cybertruck. We’ll see the rest of the truck in May and it should start rolling off the assembly line in about a year and a half.
