It took General Motors just 18 months to bring the GMC Hummer EV pickup from an idea on a drawing board to a ready-to-debut product – a monumental achievement that will set a new standard for EV development lead times within the company.
It takes an intelligent, hard-working and dedicated team of people to design and engineer any production electric vehicle in that amount of time, let alone a bar-raising one like the GMC Hummer EV pickup. For that reason, General Motors has put together a 16-minute documentary introducing us to the team behind the GMC Hummer EV and giving us a little bit of insight into the vehicle’s fast-paced development process.
“The 2022 GMC Hummer EV is a first-of-its-kind supertruck developed to forge new paths with zero emissions,” the automaker said in a prepared statement. “Watch as our team of designers and engineers take you behind the scenes to share the story of how the vehicle came to life and take a deeper dive into some of its signature features.”
The video takes us behind-the-scenes with GMC designers and engineers as they explain the reasoning behind the decisions they made during the vehicle’s design and development processes. Among those employees featured in the video are GMC lead designer Rich Scheer, color and trim designer Tara Ellis, user experience director Scott Martin and, perhaps most importantly, chief engineer Al Oppenheiser and executive chief engineer Josh Tavel.
One of the most interesting parts of the video is when Oppenheiser calls on the experienced off-road racer and GMC engineer Mike Coville to explain how he took what he’s learned racing in events like King of the Hammers and applied it to the GMC Hummer EV. Coville provided valuable input to the engineering team when they were developing systems like the Hummer EV’s available front e-lockers and rear lockers, four-wheel-steering system, Crab Walk mode and air suspension to ensure that the vehicle lived up to the Hummer nameplate it wears on its front end and tailgate.
The GMC Hummer EV Edition 1 will enter production at GM’s Factory Zero plant (formerly Detroit-Hamtramck) in late 2021. The Edition 1 trim level comes with a tri-motor powertrain producing 1,000 horsepower and will be able to travel up to 350 miles on a full charge. Prices for the vehicle, which is now sold out, started at $112,595.
For now, though, hear what the GMC Hummer EV design and engineering team has to say about the electric truck in the short documentary below.
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Comments
GM is relentlessly advertising the Hummer EV. The commercial is playing constantly yet it’s a product that won’t be available for a couple of years. Meanwhile they have products languishing on their dealers’ lots that get no advertising support. I don’t understand that. They’ve announced and introduced the public to the product through their ad campaign but why keep spending lavishly when its actual on-sale date is so far into the future.
CT6 seemingly never got a proper advertising launch nor have the CT4 and CT5.
Most of their Advertising is by market. Those cars get far more advertising on the coasts.
Fall of 2021 isn’t a couple of years away.
That was a great video – a lot of details were revealed!