How GM Put the Mean in Green

It’s betting $27 billion on an electric vehicle push. Can its Hummer EV erase the nerd factor?

- David Welch

A battery-powered Hummer pickup truck. Mary Barra, chief executive officer of General Motors Co., loved the idea from the moment she heard it. What better way to assure skeptical buyers that the company’s coming raft of electric vehicles won’t be just geeky science projects, GM President Mark Reuss’s team had argued, than by rolling out a “green” version of one of its most badass nameplates?

At a meeting in March 2019, Barra quickly asked chief engineer Josh Tavel how much time it would take to get the electric Hummer out the door. The usual four years, he responded. That was big carmakers’ age-old gestation period for getting a new model from a designer’s sketch pad to dealer showrooms. But it wouldn’t do for Barra, who’s decided to make battery power the core of the company’s strategy. “I’m thinking 2021,” she said.

Thus began what could mark the genesis of the most transformative makeover of GM since legendary Chairman Alfred P. Sloan concocted the idea of differently priced car brands to suit different types of buyers. And the fact that GM is on track to begin deliveries of the Hummer EV truck next fall—barely 30 months after that fateful meeting—shows just how determined the company is to change itself.

The giant automaker plans to push out 30 electric vehicle models by 2025 to take on market leader Tesla Inc., starting with the two most iconic brands at the top of its roster, Cadillac and Hummer. GM is spending $27 billion in an all-out effort to remake 40% of its lineup and retool one-third of its U.S. vehicle assembly factories, putting it on a one-way path to electrification.