2003 Hummer H1 Wagon on 2040-cars

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GM renames its Detroit-Hamtramck plant Factory Zero

Maybe we'll win, saved by zero. General Motors on Friday announced that its sprawling Detroit-Hamtramck facility, which is being retooled to build electric vehicles, has been renamed Factory Zero — as in zero emissions, along with the promise of an autonomous future in which there are zero crashes and zero congestion. The company is spending $2.2 billion to retool the plant into a futuristic facility that is flexible enough to build a variety of cars and trucks across the GM portfolio of brands. GM says that's the most it has ever spent on a production facility, and when the plant's cranking out EVs at scale it will have created 2,200 manufacturing jobs. Factory Zero's first projects will be the all-electric GMC Hummer pickup and the self-driving electric Cruise Origin, both build on GM's new Ultium battery platform, with other EVs to follow. Factory Zero should start cranking out Hummer pickups by fall 2021. A Hummer SUV will come along later. Check back with Autoblog when the Hummer is revealed next Tuesday, Oct. 20. Sustainability will be another key feature. During construction, excess concrete from pours in the plant has been used to pave roads, and stormwater runoff is being recycled to charge the factory suppression system and circulate in cooling towers. The 365-acre site also has 16.5 acres of wildlife habitat — GM says monarch butterflies hang out there, along with foxes and wild turkeys. GM says it's committed to powering all its southeast Michigan plants with sustainable energy by 2023, the rest of its U.S. facilities by 2030, and overseas plants by 2040. To that end, Factory Zero has a 30-kilowatt solar carport, and a 516-kilowatt ground-mounted solar farm, from DTE. “Factory ZERO is the next battleground in the EV race and will be GMÂ’s flagship assembly plant in our journey to an all-electric future,” said Gerald Johnson, GM executive vice president of Global Manufacturing. “The electric trucks and SUVs that will be built here will help transform GM and the automotive industry.” Related Video:     Green Hirings/Firings/Layoffs Plants/Manufacturing GM Hummer hamtramck

Cadillac Celestiq, Lyriq, Hummer, other future GM electric cars: Here's everything we saw at ‘EV Day’

WARREN, Mich. — Today, General Motors held an “EV Day” event at its Warren, Michigan, campus to present its new “Ultium” battery technology, modular electric vehicle architecture and soon-to-come electric vehicles. Unfortunately, we were forbidden from bringing cameras into the event, so while we canÂ’t show you what we saw, we can tell you more about it. While we saw the previously teased Cadillac EV (which we now know to be called the Lyriq) and the GMC Hummer pickup teased during the Super Bowl, there were a number of other future cars at the event, which GM President Mark Reuss assured us are all real vehicles in the works. The biggest surprise came at the end of the event, though, in the Cadillac Celestiq electric sedan, which Reuss described as a future flagship that would be hand-built “very locally.” It had been hiding under a dark sheet all morning, with the front and rear illuminated Cadillac emblems shining from underneath. When the wraps came off, we saw a long, white, four-seat fastback sedan. The 23-inch wheels were pushed out to the very corners of the car, giving it what appeared to be a very long wheelbase. The model on the stage had no side mirrors or visible door handles. The grille mirrored that of the Lyriq crossover next to it, with integrated lighting in lieu of the usual mesh or slats youÂ’d see in an internal combustion car. The entire roof, all the way until it tapered to the tail of the vehicle, was tinted glass. In back, vertical tail lighting ran down the C-pillar before turning rearward across the top of the trunk. Inside, everything below the beltline of the windows — essentially all but the headrests and top portion of the steering wheel, was hidden from view. Behind the Celestiq, a large digital display showed a rendering of its interior. The dash consists of a pillar-to-pillar curved LED display serving as both instrument panel and infotainment system. Protruding forward between the front seats was another touchscreen that appeared to house some more controls, with open area, probably for storage, below it. The rear seats had the same sort of touchscreen between them. Built into the back of the front seats were a pair of rear-seat entertainment screens, much like we saw in the Lyriq. The door panels blended wood, metal and animated lighting to give character and a sense of opulence. GM interior design manager Tristan Murphy was on hand to tell us a bit more about the Celestiq.

General Motors has tried to cast Hummer in a greener light before

Rumors claim General Motors will resurrect the Hummer name on an electric pickup truck by 2022, and GM allegedly will preview the model with an ad starring basketball star LeBron James during the 2020 Super Bowl. If accurate, the move would represent a stunning 180-degree turn for a nameplate long associated with war-like gas-guzzlers. It wouldn't be the first time the automaker has tried to cast Hummer in a greener light, however. In 2004, when mass electrification looked as realistic as George Jetson's flying car, Hummer collaborated with Quantum Technologies to build a one-off H2 SUT named H2H powered by hydrogen. Engineers modified the stock H2's 6.0-liter V8 to run on compressed hydrogen stored in three carbon fiber tanks, and added a supercharger to offset the loss of power. The eight-cylinder made 180 horsepower, compared to 325 horsepower in the gasoline-powered model, and the truck's 12-pound hydrogen storage capacity gave it a 60-mile range. "The H2H was created for two purposes. It brings focus and attention to the journey to a hydrogen economy, and it will provide GM with key learnings on hydrogen storage, hydrogen delivery systems, and hydrogen refueling infrastructure development," explained Elizabeth Lowery, the company's then-vice president of environment and energy. She emphasized the H2H's experimental vocation and said there were no plans to bring it to production. Actor, then-California governor, and devout Hummer fan Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated the H2H as a vision of the future after taking it for a spin. It didn't have much of a future, as it turns out, and it remained a prototype. Fast-forward to 2009, less than a year before Hummer shut down after the Chinese government vetoed a proposed sale to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company. General Motors teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, it had much bigger worries than Hummer's fuel economy, so the task of making a greener truck fell into the lap of suppliers. FEV and Raser joined forces to build a plug-in hybrid prototype based on the H3. Its powertrain was built around a turbocharged, 2.0-liter EcoTec engine related to the unit found in the Chevrolet HHR SS and the Pontiac Solstice GXP, among other cars. In this application, it powered a 100-kilowatt generator that zapped a 268-horsepower electric motor into motion. Output traveled through the H3's stock four-speed automatic transmission and four-wheel-drive system, including the transfer case.