GMC will soon debut an electric vehicle (EV) version of its popular Sierra pickup. The truck isn’t likely to reach showrooms until 2023 at the earliest. But it should make its first public appearance this winter, and the company has given fans a little tease.
To Prove Your Truck is Electric, You Use a Lot of Electricity
Photos and a brief video posted to YouTube show a smooth front end highlighted by a lot of lights. A body-color panel in place of the usual grille (EVs don’t need grilles) is ringed in LEDs. Each letter of the GMC logo at the center of that is edged in LEDs. Huge LED running lights flank the false grille. And a trio of small LEDs stacked vertically between the running lights and the false grille play a little welcome animation when the truck starts up.
The inverted-L-shaped running lights look similar to those Ford uses on its own electric F-150 Lightning. It seems that using a lot of electricity for the lights is the favorite design cue of electric truck makers.
High-Luxe Model Coming First?
The video offers just one other hint. It refers to the truck as the Electric Sierra Denali. Denali is the name GMC gives to its luxury trim level, seemingly suggesting that the first electric Sierra will be the fancy one.
GMC hasn’t said when more details would come. The gas-powered Sierra shares almost every bolt and stitch of its structure with the Chevy Silverado. Chevy plans to unveil an all-electric Silverado early next month when General Motors CEO Mary Barra gives a keynote speech at the annual CES electronics show in Las Vegas.
GMC’s first teaser for the electric Sierra came just a few weeks after Chevy revealed that the electric Silverado is on the way. If that pattern holds, we may learn more about the Sierra EV sometime around early February.
GMC’s Second Electric Pickup
It won’t, however, be GMC’s first electric pickup. The GMC Hummer EV will beat it to showrooms. A GMC spokesperson confirmed for us this morning that it “is currently being built at Factory Zero and is set to begin customer deliveries by the end of the year.”
The two trucks can probably share showroom floor space without cannibalizing one another’s sales. The Hummer EV is more of an off-road-oriented vehicle, leaving room for a Sierra designed to do the hauling and towing work of more traditional pickups.
Keyword: GMC Teases Electric Sierra Denali