• General Motors is producing 12 electric Hummers a day despite a waiting list of 77,000 buyers. 
  • Production at the Detroit factory is unusually slow, reports The Wall Street Journal.
  • The ramp-up has been slow because the EV was developed from scratch, GM told the newspaper.

Anyone waiting for General Motor's new electric Hummer may have to wait a bit longer than usual. 

GM is only producing about 12 vehicles a day despite having a waiting list of 77,000 buyers, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources.

The pace is unusually slow given that production began more than six months ago, consultants told The Journal. 

The company first revealed the GMC's Hummer EV in October 2020. Its first electric pickup truck is aimed at rivals from Ford, Tesla and Rivian in a fast-growing market. 

Hummers rose to fame after being used in the Gulf war in the early 1990s, with celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger getting behind the wheel. However, the huge vehicles weighed 10,000 pounds, averaged less than 10 miles a gallon and production ended in 2009 when GM filed for bankruptcy. 

The company has spent $2.2 billion renovating its Detroit factory, which has around 700 workers, to manufacture the vehicle, per The Journal.  

The company has spent $2.2 billion renovating its Detroit factory to make the vehicle, The Wall Street Journal reported. Foto: Mandel Ngan/Getty Images

A GM spokesperson told the newspaper that increasing output has been slower partly because the EV has been developed from scratch, using a new platform. 

Production was on track, the spokesperson said, and should rise later this year when the company starts using its own batteries, produced in Ohio, rather than buying them in, The Journal reported. 

"You can expect to see hundreds of deliveries grow to thousands later this year," the GM spokesperson told the newspaper. 

GM did not immediately reply to Insider's request for comment. 

The Hummer starts at $85,000 to $110,000 depending on the model. 

Americans are paying $54,000 on average for an EV, a 22% jump compared to May last year, according to J.D. Power. 

Soaring costs of raw materials needed for electric cars such as nickel, lithium and cobalt, partly due to supply chain pressures, have left car makers facing higher production costs.  The war in Ukraine has also been a factor as Russia is a key exporter of some of the metals. 

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