General Motors details massive EV future and electric delivery vehicle business Bright Drop

General Motors has used its CES keynote to detail all things electric, from Hummers to flying car drones and a new fleet production and management business.

Genereal Motors chief executive and chairman Mary Barra .

General Motors has launched a manufacturing and fleet support business that will produce electric delivery vehicles that travel 400km on one charge. They will be available for order in 2022.

The business, Bright Drop, is part of a transition to making electric vehicles by General Motors, a strategy detailed by chairman and CEO Mary Barra who was a keynote speaker at this week’s CES consumer electronics show.

The company’s 50-minute presentation was overwhelmingly about electric and self drive vehicles, and partnerships with operators such as FedEx Express. General Motors’ truck division GMC, Cadillac, Buick and Chevrolet will all get makeovers and that includes the Hummer, with the Hummer EV Edition 1 already wildly popular.

When it was flagged around October last year, the Hummer EV reportedly sold out within 10 minutes; its $150,000-plus price tag was no barrier. It offers 1,000 horsepower, GMs Super Cruise with hands-free driving and automatic lane changing, and, says GM, “crabwalk”. Its rear wheels can turn up to 10 degrees in either direction to drive diagonally at low speeds, a useful feature on tight bush trails.

Ms Barra said the company was investing more than $US27bn ($35bn) to 2025 in electric and self drive vehicles and was retooling plants. The spend included building a new battery facility with South Korea’s LG Chem in Ohio that would employ more than 1000 workers.

Battery development and production was a big part of GMs move to electric. The company’s presentation demonstrated how it was modifying cells comprising manganese, nickel and cobalt to rely less on cobalt and nickel through the greater use of aluminium.

Cells could be arranged in cars in compact modular groups. She quoted a vehicle target of up to 724 km on one charge, with batteries costing 40 per cent less and weighing 25 per cent lighter. She envisaged a 10-minute charge would add 145 km of travel.

Batteries would be integrated into 22 GM vehicles by 2023. Further on, batteries would offer 800km to 965km on a single charge, she said.

Ms Barra said car firmware upgrades would take place over the air and owners could buy and download premium upgrades. Vehicles would connect to their respective GMC, Cadillac, Buick and Chevrolet apps and up to eight family members could be configured to use the one vehicle.

GM also showed a flying car drone called eVTOL, a concept two-seater flying vehicle, and a redesigned interior social space for transport called Cadillac Halo Portfolio where passengers are arranged in a semicircle. It’s concept vapourware at this stage.

The biggest announcement was Bright Drop, GMs new fleet management business unit where it will build and sell electric vehicles and work with commercial partners to offer software and services.

Ms Barra announced FedEx Express in the US as the first customer. GM had designed an electric pallet called the EP1 which simplified loading and unloading. It would be available next year.

The Bright Drop EV600 electric vehicles would have a 400km range and would be available for order in 2022. She said medium distance solutions would support multiple EP1s.

GM in its presentation said that in the past nine months during the pandemic, ecommerce had accelerated at a rate not expected for 3-5 years with now 100 million packages expected to be delivered per day in the US by 2023, a target that will happen three years earlier than anticipated.

Cruise, a US self driving company acquired by General Motors, said it had been testing fully autonomous cars on the streets of San Francisco. It had done the necessary “paperwork” to have no human backup driver in the cars which had travelled 100,000s of miles in San Francisco. Cruise Origin is slated to be built at General Motors’ “Factory Zero”.