As of the end of March 2022, GMC has received over 77,000 reservations for its Hummer EV truck. That number has surely been exceeded since last checking in on the apparent Hummer success story. And yesterday, we got word that Hummer production has ramped up, and is now producing 12 a day. So, we crunched the numbers to get an idea of how long those 77,000+ buyers will be waiting at this speedy pace. 

With 12 Hummers built a day, how long must reservation holders wait?

Can we be honest? Based on our arithmetic, even without any more orders, many will never get a Hummer truck. Hummer production began in mid-November of 2021. So the truck has been produced for over six months. 

If you figure 12 a day for six days, that’s 72 in a week. That, in turn, comes out to just under 3,700 in a year. Based on that, it will take over 20 years to get through all of these pre-orders. 

Granted, it is unlikely that production will stay at 12 Hummers a day. But being in production since November, we expected far more. We know the truck is more complicated than a Chevy Silverado. But we also know that at the Fort Wayne, Indiana, assembly plant alone, GM builds over 1,000 trucks a day. 

Can’t Hummer production increase?

What GM is saying is that right now, it uses LG battery cells for its EVs, which includes the Hummer. Once it switches over to its own battery manufacturing in Ohio, that should increase battery supplies dramatically. It will “grow to thousands” which should happen later this year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

With 24 modules containing 24 cells each, there are a total of 576 pouch cells. That adds up to almost 3,000 lbs worth of batteries. Which is needed due to the extreme weight of the truck. 

Overall weight is almost 10,000 lbs, an unprecedented heft not seen since the Mercedes-Maybach S600 Pullman Guard, which weighed slightly more. It featured armor plating throughout. Even the tires were bulletproof. So this is a massively heavy vehicle, which means an incredible amount of kWh is necessary to pull the beast. 

Is this why so few Hummers are made?

Today GM announced in its Q2 quarterly report that supply chain issues have resulted in a 16 percent overall reduction in production for the quarter. We don’t know if supply chain problems are affecting the Hummer, but if that is so, it might explain the low production rate of the truck. 

But different indicators continue to show that supplies, and production, are slowly getting back to what is considered normal. However, it is expected that limited production and unfinished new vehicles will be the norm through the end of 2022. So there is still a long way to go before the wheels start turning at their normal rates.