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GMC Has The Best Hummer EV Problem Imaginable
March 31, 2022
by Sebastian Cenizo Industry News / 12 Comments
And some said an electric Hummer would never be a success...
When the GMC Hummer EV was first announced, there was a large portion of the motoring industry that thought it would fail miserably. Many felt that a Hummer needed a gas-guzzling engine and a massive, heavy body to succeed.
The final product at least ticked one of those boxes, weighing in at over 9,000 pounds, and although it's powered by electricity rather than fossil fuel, the enormous EV has been a hit with the public. In fact, demand has now become so fervorous that General Motors is looking to increase production. According to a report from CNBC, GM has received over 65,000 reservations for both the pickup and the Hummer SUV.
GMC global vice president Duncan Aldred says that this number is far higher than the company anticipated, but should GMC make a call based on reservations? After all, most of these never turn into actual orders. Well, Aldred went on to explain that the number of people converting their reservations to orders has been far higher than expected at around 95%. So how will GM deal with this increased demand?
"Production's actually slightly ahead of plan and we're putting things in place now to actually expedite that as well, so we can deliver these reservations quicker than we originally thought," said the executive. "We're seeing momentum building."
The timing of this news is great; as a result of the increased public exposure of a new ad campaign that launched in late February, March has been the best month for reservations since the electric Hummers were
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Megan Hart, assistant marketing manager for Hummer, says that, in the beginning, reservations for the electric Hummer have favored the pickup as it was launched first, but newer reservations are showing a more even split between the pickup and SUV. Unfortunately, exact numbers would not be provided.
However, Aldred was quick to point out that new orders would likely not be fulfilled until 2024 due to the huge number of reservations already recorded. That's not too bad considering that early hand-raisers are still only likely to get their hands on their Hummers in 2023 anyway.
As we touched on above, GM is on track to produce more vehicles than originally planned and Aldred adds that next year will be no different: "We're going to build quite significantly more than our original plan." At this rate, even Hummer EV naysayers are going to end up buying the thing.
