General Motors Confirms it Will Build an Electric Chevy Silverado Pickup, Sending its Stock Price to a Record High

author: FutureCar Staff    

GM is building an electric Chevy Silverado pickup.

Just days after teasing the new Hummer EV SUV version, automaker General Motors is gearing up to build more electric pickup trucks, beginning with a battery-powered version of the popular Chevy Silverado.

The electric Silverado will go into production late next year at GM's Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, a source familiar with the U.S. automaker's plan said to Reuters on Tuesday. The Silverado EV will have a range of more than 400 miles on a full charge, according to GM.

The vehicle is expected to go on sale in early 2023 as a 2024 model, another source said. However GM declined to comment on the production timeline for Silverado.

GM plans to build an electric Silverado sent the automakers shares to record highs on Tuesday. The automaker's stock closed up 1.5% at $61.94 a share, the highest levels in over a decade after GM emerged from bankruptcy after the 2008- 2009 recession.

GM's share price experienced a rebound over the past year since the global pandemic put a big dent in auto sales in the second quarter of last year. A year ago during the height of the pandemic, GM's shares were trading just over $20.

GM's market cap is now $89.25 billion.

GM's Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, where the electric Silverado will be built, is currently being converted to produce only electric vehicles. Last year GM announced that the factory will be renamed "Factory Zero" to align with its corporate vision of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.

The first vehicle built at the plant will be the upcoming Hummer EV, which GM resurrected as an electric brand last year.

GM's Factory Zero

GM is investing $2.2 billion in the Detroit-Hamtramck facility for retooling and upgrades in order to build EVs at scale. The investment represents the single largest investment in a plant in the automaker's history. Once fully operational, Factory ZERO will also create more than 2,200 U.S. manufacturing jobs, GM said last year.

The factory's conversion into an EV factory also represents a changing auto industry in the U.S., as Detroit's automakers pivot from building internal combustion engine powered vehicles to ones powered by batteries. 

"The vehicles coming from Factory Zero will change the world, and how the world views electric vehicles," GM President Mark Reuss said in a statement. "The GMC Hummer EV SUV joins its stablemate in the realm of true supertrucks, and Chevrolet will take everything Chevy's loyal truck buyers love about Silverado — and more — and put it into an electric pickup that will delight retail and commercial customers alike."

In November of 2020, GM announced it was investing an additional $7 billion in electrification, up from the $20 billion its had already committed. The automaker's investment to develop new electric vehicles now totals $27 billion through 2025.

In January, GM announced plans to become a carbon neutral company by 2040. To reach that aggressive goal, the automaker plans to phase out internal combustion engine passenger models including light-duty trucks and SUVs by 2035 in what will be a historic move for the company that has been building gas-powered vehicles since 1908.

However, GM's new advanced Utium EV architecture that will underpin its future EVs will position the automaker to better compete with Tesla and other major automakers that are introducing new fully-electric models. 

The Ultium EV architecture will be the core of GM's future EV lineup and will support a wide range of new EVs from GM, including both cars and trucks. The EV platform standardizes many of the electronics and components and will allow GM to build more cost efficient electric vehicles.  

GM's plan to release around 30 new EVs globally by 2025 as part of its massive $27 billion investment in electric and autonomous vehicles. GM is aiming for 40% of its U.S. models offered to be electric by the end of 2025.

GM will announce additional electric models and details at a later date. 

To support its push to build more EVs, GM announced last November that it's hiring 3,000 new employees for high-tech roles in fields such as software engineering, IT and design. The new roles will contribute to GM's overall electrification strategy, including its work on autonomous driving and vehicle connectivity, as the automaker prepares to take on Tesla.

FutureCar Staff