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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

2022 GMC Hummer EV Edition 1 Prototype Drive Review | Let the supertruck wars begin

MILFORD, Mich. — Hummer is high on the list of vehicles we never thought would return. The gas-guzzling brutes met their demise more than a decade ago as the industry pivoted briefly to smaller cars and General Motors shed brands during its historic restructuring. Fast-forward to 2022, and HummerÂ’s revival is at hand thanks to yet another industry shift, this time to electric propulsion. ItÂ’s expensive, itÂ’s still huge and the numbers are eye-popping to the tune of 1,000 horsepower. America loves a comeback — but it loves trucks more. We briefly tested the 2022 GMC Hummer EV Edition 1 truck at the GM Proving Grounds 40 miles northwest of Detroit. Weeks from now, Hummers will start rolling off the line at GMÂ’s EV site, dubbed Factory Zero, in the Motor City. While the Hummer SUV will undoubtedly prove its worth, GM is leading with the pickup, ambitiously calling it a supertruck and eagerly touting its metrics and mojo-generating features, like CrabWalk, against the Rivian R1T, Ford F-150 Lightning, Tesla Cybertruck, as well as gas-powered off-roaders like the Ford F-150 Raptor and Ram 1500 TRX, plus various Jeep and Land Rover SUVs. (Here's our latest supertruck spec comparo). All of them have impressed us (save the Cybertruck, which only Jay Leno and a few others have driven), but the Hummer is formidable in its own right. For one thing, itÂ’s a Hummer. The negative connotations of the old Hummers melt away when thereÂ’s a 24-module Ultium battery pack powering three motors for a range of 350-plus miles on a single charge. The old model was divisive, but a lot of people paid a lot of money for them simply because they looked very cool. HummerÂ’s familiar grille makes it bold return on our tester that looms high on its 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler Territory MT tires. It certainly looks the part of a supertruck. The cabin is roomy and airy, with the removable sky panels letting in the bright fall morning. Hummer EV chief engineer Al Oppenheiser is our co-pilot for our test, and after a quick walk-through, weÂ’re off.  The first order of business is simply mashing the throttle. The Edition 1 serves up about 1,200 pound-feet of torque, and you can make use of all of that and the four-figure horsepower to hit 60 mph in about 3 seconds. We accelerate hard, blasting over some soft ground before things get a little squirrelly and can confirm the claimed time feels legit.

Why didn't GM recall fire-prone Hummers earlier?

As early as 2009, motorists reported fires in the Hummer H3. In a complaint filed that March with the regulatory agency in charge of vehicle safety, one motorist said they leaped into a smoldering vehicle and drove it away from gas pumps moments before it was engulfed in flames. Three months later, another motorist described how a fire spread from behind the glove box and consumed their H3. Dozens of car owners filed similar complaints with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the six years that followed, detailing car fires of varying severity that originated in the HVAC systems of their Hummer H3s. But General Motors didn't issue a recall for any of the affected cars until last week, prompting fresh questions about how the company treats safety concerns in the wake of an ignition-switch flaw that went unaddressed for years and, at latest count, is responsible for killing at least 124 motorists. In recall documents filed with NHTSA last week, GM initially said it knew of three fires associated with the defect. Within hours, the company said it knew of 42 fires associated with the problem and three injuries sustained by vehicle occupants. A company spokesperson attributed the inconsistency to a "misstated" number in the original documents and that the higher number comes from NHTSA complaints, reports to GM and TREAD data. Beyond that discrepancy, the documents show General Motors, which has touted a revitalized attitude toward safety concerns since the ignition-switch recalls, did nothing upon determining there was a problem with the H3s. Prompted by two complaints the company received in September 2014, General Motors says it launched an internal investigation related to melting blowers in the HVAC system on December 8, 2014. In that investigation, the company says it confirmed a problem existed, finding that "mismatched electrical conductivity could result in overheating and melting of the blower motor connector module." But even with that conclusion, the company opted to close its internal investigation on April 29, 2015, without taking any action. It wasn't until NHTSA officials met with GM representatives in a meeting on June 18, 2015, that General Motors was prompted to reconsider.