GMC Had a Good 2022, but Where’s the Hummer?

• Sales for GMC were brisk in 2022, and new heavy-duty pickups and midsize trucks are coming soon, followed early next year by the all-electric Sierra full-size pickup. Average transaction prices are up, too.

• But why has it taken so long for GMC to produce a mere 854 Hummer EVs over the past two years? GMC chief Duncan Aldred says production issues have been addressed, as well as component shortages, so heavier volume should be seen later this year.

• This week, GM’s Factory Zero produced the first 2024 Hummer SUV, which was auctioned this past weekend at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale for $500,000 to benefit a non-profit environmental organization.

General Motors’ Factory Zero in Detroit has launched production of the long-awaited 2024 GMC Hummer SUV, and the first one off the assembly line was auctioned this past weekend at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale for $500,000 to benefit Tread Lightly!, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting outdoor recreation and environmental conservation.

GMC began hyping the 9000-pound Hummer EV three years ago during the Super Bowl and yet sold only one Hummer over the next two years, by the end of 2021, according to Wards Intelligence data. The COVID-19 pandemic caused lots of supply shortages and bottlenecks in that timeframe, but Ford, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and others managed to get their EVs to market, unlike Hummer.

The problems continued into 2022, when GMC delivered only 854 Hummer EV pickups—and barely any in the fourth quarter. (Meanwhile, VW sold more than 20,000 ID.4 EV crossovers in 2022, for context.)

Still, by most metrics, GMC had a solid 2022, growing US sales by 7.25% to 517,649 vehicles, compared to 2021. That’s nearly four times the volume of Cadillac (which was up 13.8% last year) and five times the pace of the beleaguered Buick brand, which lost 42.4% of its volume last year to a mere 103,519 units, according to Wards Intelligence data.

Touting GMC’s achievements in 2022, Duncan Aldred, global vice president of Buick and GMC, told journalists this week that average transaction prices in 2022 weighed in at $76,392 for GMC’s luxury-leaning Denali trim, trailing only Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz. The GMC brand’s average transaction prices overall ended 2022 at $63,405, topping Lincoln, Audi, Volvo, and Lexus, but trailing Jaguar and BMW. Not bad for a brand that markets itself as “professional grade” rather than directly targeting luxury shoppers.

Driving up GMC’s transaction prices are its Yukon full-size SUVs, which have an extremely thin seven days’ supply in inventory. Customers were also happy to shell out an average $80,000 for the Yukon in 2022. “So they come in (at dealerships) and literally they go out, and often they’re pre-sold,” Aldred said of Yukon demand.

Despite his optimism, there are nagging questions about the all-electric Hummer, which represents the tip of General Motors’ EV spear—the first vehicle from a GM consumer brand to use the modular Ultium battery architecture slated for multiple vehicle platforms.

GMC began taking reservations for the Hummer pickup in October 2020, and this week Aldred reports there are 90,000 hand-raisers for Hummers. How long will it take GMC to convert them into Hummer customers?

Based on the recent past, it will take many years of steady production, but Aldred says this week the pace of production at Factory Zero “really takes us out through 2023, really through 2024.” Is that assuming all the customers who yearned for a Hummer two years ago still want one, or that many are willing to wait another year or two?

This year and next, Factory Zero will be busy launching the high-volume all-electric Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra full-size pickups, so the flexibility of the Ultium battery architecture is about to be fully tested in the manufacturing environment. During this week’s media briefing, Aldred says capacity at Factory Zero will not be the limiting factor in Hummer production going forward.

Andred isn’t saying exactly how many Hummers he hopes can roll off the line at Factory Zero this year, but he says most of this year’s production volume will come in the second half. It helps, especially, that many of the production hiccups have been addressed, he says.

“Things are much better now,” he says, recalling difficulties with COVID lockdowns in a number of countries, as well as labor shortages for component suppliers. “That can interrupt production where suppliers simply can’t keep the production level up that we require,” he says.

Plus, the chip shortage “has definitely gotten much, much better.” Aldred recalls over the past two years GMC vehicles having to be built without heated seats, then retrofitting them later when the components arrived. “Now, the chips have turned up. Clearly, this is something we’re going to have to still manage but it’s markedly different to what we were experiencing last year.”

Aldred says 2022’s production volume “was always intended to be very, very low” for Hummer. “It was always going to be slow in order to get that quality, that production methodology absolutely perfected, and that will continue to get better. And then we’ve just got to ensure that the supply chain can meet the schedules that we’re putting in place.”

Looking beyond production of the Hummer and Sierra EVs, Aldred says it’s too soon to discuss where GMC should head with its next battery-electric vehicle. It certainly won’t be a heavy-duty pickup, due to poor range while towing, but maybe the Terrain or Yukon make sense, given the platform connections with the Chevy Equinox and full-size pickups, which are already confirmed for the Ultium EV treatment.

Aldred will only say that GMC is part of GM’s “journey to becoming all-electric,” and that the market will “see entries which complement that because we still see GMC as a huge part of the portfolio of brands, a very successful one.”

On the internal-combustion front, GMC will soon start producing new heavy-duty Sierra pickups and midsize Canyons.

As GMC Hummers have trickled out of the factory, are you still excited to get behind the wheel? Does the pent-up demand remain strong? Please comment below.