Hummer by name, hummer by an electric drivetrain…
COME SUPER BOWL next month and we’ll reportedly see LeBron James advertising a revived Hummer brand, complete with electric pickup and SUV lineup.
That’s according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources that have confirmed the car brand’s relaunch ad will debut during the NFL championship game in February, staring the professional NBA basketballer.
General Motors retired Hummer in 2009, claiming the then gas-guzzling four-wheel drive company was a causality of the GFC. Now, it will apparently resurrect as GM’s electric rival to the likes of Tesla’s Cybertruck, Rivian’s electric SUV and pickup duo and other manufacturers homing in on the new enviro-friendly truck scene.
It is not the first time we’ve heard that Hummer is going green, Reuters reporting last year that GM was planning to build premium electric pickups under the shelved badge at its revitalised Detroit-Hamtramck plant. And this is not the first electric Hummer to be launched by an A-lister, with Arnold Schwarzenegger presenting the Kreisel Electric Hummer two years ago.
However, this is certainly the first production Hummer EV, and the WSJ report goes on to suggest that Hummer will launch its electric vehicles to market in 2022. By then, the Hummer brand will be sitting in GMC dealerships across the US, next to petrol and diesel pickups such as the GMC Canyon and Sierra, the latter which shares its underpinnings with the Chevrolet Silverado sold by HSV in Australia.
If the WSJ news unfolds to be true, it will be a pivot for GM which was looking to sell Hummer to a Chinese manufacturer Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery ten years ago, but couldn’t, reportedly due to Chinese regulation and government intervention.
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