It’s been almost 10 years since the last Hummer was produced and for a while, it seemed that a company in China would take over the brand which started in 1992. However, that never happened and General Motors, the brand owner, stopped production and marketing after 2010. Although sold mainly in America, the Hummer was an iconic vehicle globally because of its looks and size and perhaps the fact that it was a civilian version of a military vehicle.
In May 2020, GM will revive the Hummer with the unveiling of an all-new model although statements by senior GM executives indicate that it will be a model name rather than a brand as it used to be. The vehicle will be sold under the GMC brand and it will be a totally different type of Hummer because it will have an all-electric powerplant instead of the 6.2-litre engine (the Hummer H3 had a smaller 3.5-litre powerplant).
It will be GMC’s first all-electric truck, a rival to Tesla’s Cybertruck which Elon Musk says already has 250,000 orders from people who paid refundable US$100 deposit. Starting off with the theme of ‘Quiet Revolution’ in advertising spots starting on May 20, the HUMMER EV, as it will be known, will have 1,000 bhp, 15,592 Nm of torque and a claimed 0 to 60 mph (96 km/h) time of 3 seconds. And without the noise and unhealthy emissions Hummers of the past generated but expected to still have superior capabilities off-road.
The HUMMER EV will be built at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant which has received a US$2.2 billion investment to make it the company’s first fully-dedicated electric vehicle assembly factory. GM’s first all-electric truck will be a pick-up with production scheduled to begin in late 2021. This will be followed soon after by the Cruise Origin, a shared, electric, self-driving vehicle unveiled by Cruise in San Francisco last week. Somewhere in the production schedule would also be the HUMMER EV which GMC informs will be initially available during the fourth quarter of 2021.
GM’s joint venture with LG Chem – which is investing US$2.3 billion to manufacture battery packs – will supply battery cells for the electric vehicles manufactured at Detroit-Hamtramck. It will be interesting what size of battery packs the HUMMER EV will have – would it guzzle electricity the way the original Hummer consumed fuel at a rate of around 4 kms/litre (even the ‘lighter’ H3 did 7 kms/litre at best). That consumption figure was one of the reasons why Hummer sales died quickly as fuel prices rose, taking the company down with it.
