Sierra 1500

Make
GMC
Segment
Sports Car

The battery-electric pickup truck segment is heating up fast, with Ford, Tesla, Rivian, Bollinger, Lordstown Motors, and now Karma Automotive all confirming pure-electric trucks on the way over the next couple of years.

But let's not forget about General Motors, which has confirmed that it is working on a pure-electric pickup of its own. It's rumored that the truck, confirmed late last year, will relaunch the defunct Hummer brand, positioning itself as a capable battery-powered off-roader. According to previous reports, the truck might be advertised during this year's Super Bowl.

Yet that won't be the end of the road for GM's electric pickup efforts - not by a long shot - as company President Mark Reuss has indicated that the automaker will offer more than a single battery-electric truck model.

Speaking to electrek, Reuss said we'll "see multiple pickup trucks" over the coming years. "There are a lot of things we haven't announced yet, but there's a wide bandwidth that we can accomplish with our battery-electric truck platform," he told the outlet, alluding to the myriad "micro-segments within pickup trucks."

"We have a very modular set of batteries," Reuss continued. "We can go low-floor, low-roof. Or we can go high-roof, high-pack."

Naturally, one might expect a big, heavy electric truck to have a correspondingly large battery pack, but Reuss doesn't tend to think GM's packs will get too much larger. "When we started with the Volt and the Bolt, we probably over-designed those battery packs," he told electrek. "They may never die."

But the Chevrolet Volt and Bolt programs have given GM valuable data about how people actually use EV powertrains, although that data won't necessarily translate directly to an electric truck. "We haven't yet put a battery-electric truck out there, so we don't know exactly the duty cycle on that," Reuss admitted. Still, GM is on a path of "decreasing the cell cost and size and improving the curve of performance and value, independent of cell chemistry," he suggests.

Look for GM's first electric pickup truck to debut soon, ahead of a 2021 launch. Plans beyond 2021 could reportedly include battery-electric versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and Cadillac Escalade, to be produced at GM's Detroit-Hammtramck plant starting in 2023.