Hummer officially resurrected as EV brand

Hummer is officially back in business, and like you’ve never seen it before.

General Motors confirmed the development overnight with the release of a lone teaser image and a series of short teaser videos.

The controversial SUV and truck brand will make its official revival on Monday (Australian time) during coverage of this NFL Super Bowl in the US. GM has reportedly engaged LA Lakers star LeBron James to star in the high-profile advertisement.

Significantly, the Hummer brand will be recast as purely electric, which itself is a quantum shift from the marque that became the bane of environmentalists during the early noughties.

The circa 1000hp (746kW) EV behemoth will fall under GM’s GMC brand, capable of notching 100km/h in three seconds.

General Motors says it will build the reborn Hummer at the Detroit-Hamtramck factory in Michigan. The hulking electric SUV is set to revealed at a Las Vegas event on May 20, ahead of its full showroom landing around September 2021.

In the US, the HUMMER EV will take on the likes of Rivian and Tesla’s Cybertruck, Bollinger and Fisker, among a slew of others.

The company is set to build a full-size battery electric pick-up expected to be based on the Chevrolet Silverado.

“GMC builds premium and capable trucks and SUVs and the GMC HUMMER EV takes this to new heights,” said Duncan Aldred, vice president of GMC. “We are excited to debut our revolutionary zero-emissions truck during the biggest night in TV advertising.”

GM famously closed down Hummer in 2010 in the wake of historic bankruptcy and restructuring brought on by the global financial crisis.

After purchasing the Hummer brand in 1999, GM produced a trio of SUV models led by the hulking H1 – a civilian version of the US military’s High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV or Humvee).

Sales peaked a year after the launch of the H3 in 2005, but GM’s plan to produce a ute version of the smallest Hummer model, the H3, were scuppered by rising fuel prices and falling sales, before the Chinese government blocked GM’s plan to sell Hummer to a Chinese company in 2010 and the brand was retired instead.

Right-hand drive versions of the Hummer H3, which rode on the same ladder frame as the GM Colorado/Canyon/Rodeo, were made in GM’s Port Elizabeth plant in South Africa and sold in other RHD markets including Australia and Japan from late 2007.

However, less than 2000 Hummer H3s were officially sold here before the brand was axed in mid-2010.