Last year, GM sold over a half a million heavy duty Silverado pickups but none of them look like the one the automaker showed off at the recent Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition.
In its announcement, GM Defense LLC, a subsidiary of General Motors, said it hopes to address the modern defense landscape which “demands advanced capability, rapid fielding and sustainable scale.”
And GM says it doesn't start with a blank sheet of paper, rather, leverages the automaker’s manufacturing, supply chain and engineering scale in service military applications.
In the case of the Silverado, GM Defense unveiled a concept - the Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or UGV, which is built on the 3500HD architecture. And what’s most striking about this is that the vehicle has no cab.
GM says the UGV can silently carry supplies and evacuate troops using an ICE engine and power take-off unit that charges an onboard battery. The cabinless design means more payload – 8,000 lbs in this case – as well as fewer demands on the range provided by 102 kWh of onboard energy.
The company plans to be engaging in functional trials of the vehicle next year – a goal made possible by the fact that GM can leverage existing components and supply chain capabilities.
Speaking of reinventing the wheel, GM – who has made its energy storage ambitions well known – also brought a prototype of its EPIQ Hybrid system to the Army Expo, describing it as a “customer-inspired … expeditionary energy storage system paired with an onboard generator to lower thermal and noise signatures in austere environments.”
