GMC has a hit on their hands with the Hummer EV, and it’s serving its job as a flagship for General Motors. The Edition 1 model will be the true flagship of the four model lineup when it hits the streets this time next year, and if you want one, reservations are already full. In fact, according to GMC’s Phil Brook, they filled up in an astonishing 10 minutes.
“Edition 1 sold out in ten minutes, and we’ve got several thousand people on a waiting list,” said Brook, who is VP of marketing for GMC and Buick, to MC&T. We previously reported reservations were full in an hour, which is still notably fast.
The strategy is similar to what we see from GM’s cross town rivals. Take for example the Ford Bronco First Edition and Ram TRX Launch Edition. Both will be limited production, and both are already fully spoken for, but Ford and Ram have not been shy about how many units of these particular vehicles will be made. For the 2021 Bronco First Edition, it’s 7,000 units (doubled from the original 3,500), and Ram is building just 702 examples of the Hellcat-powered TRX Launch Edition.
Oppositely, GMC isn’t exactly saying how many Hummer EV Edition 1 electric pickup trucks will be made, only that they are all spoken for. We’ll have to figure this mystery out on our own.
“We’re not going to get into specifics of production,” Duncan Aldred, VP of Global Buick and GMC to MC&T. This means the Edition 1 model and its $112,595 price tag most likely won’t be a limited edition. Instead, it’ll be limited by how many they can make at Factory Zero, GM’s revamped Detroit-Hamtramck factory, in roughly one year from now. Factory Zero is also slated to build other electric trucks in the future.
After 2022, the Edition 1 will make way for lower trim levels. GM knows how many they can make in a year, and that’s how many Hummer EV Edition 1 models will reach customers. We’ll have to wait and see what that number ends up being.
But the reborn Hummer debut was successful in more ways than just full reservations. Brook said “Hummer EV” was the most searched term on Google the day it launched. People are excited about this truck whether they can afford it or not.
“The website was overwhelmed. We’ve never seen interest and demand like we saw yesterday. It was basically 10X what we normally get, and even 3x more than when we ran our (Hummer EV) Superbowl spot,” said Brook. “If you think about the current election cycle, for our new truck to be number 1 in Google Search, it shows there’s a huge amount of demand there.”