GM's Global VP Says What Everyone Already Knows About The Hummer EV

Although electric vehicles tend to be much simpler mechanically than their gasoline counterparts, there is one piece that commands more attention than anything in a gas-powered car - the battery. An EV needs an absolutely massive battery if it wants to get a reasonable range on a full charge, and the battery's size is amplified as the vehicle gets bigger.

So it should be no surprise that General Motors Company's GM Hummer EV packs a humongous battery at 200kWh. For perspective, Tesla's largest available vehicle, the Model X, has a battery half the size and can travel about the same distance on a full charge.

Motor1 reports that GM's Global Vice President, Duncan Aldred, has warned that the Hummer's production may be limited if battery supplies become more constrained than they already are.

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For smaller vehicles, reducing the size of a battery to free up supply to create more cars with a slightly reduced range would be an acceptable strategy. But at the size and weight of the Hummer EV, it needs all the battery it can get, which Aldred says is essentially equal to two smaller electric vehicles.

During GM's Q4 earnings call, the company talked about a $650-million equity investment to develop the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada. Lithium Americas estimates the lithium extracted from the project can support the production of up to 1 million EVs per year. Although, if Aldred's words are to be taken at face value, the same amount of lithium would support approximately 500,000 Hummer EVs.

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Photo: courtesy of GM