Emerging rapidly out of dense foliage, a truck swings around a bend on a washboard gravel road, but the only sound is the crunch of gravel beneath tires and the occasional ping of a rock hitting its underside. The truck is a new hybrid vehicle that GM Defense has developed to show the Army what is possible for a Humvee-type capability that meets the needs of modern warfare.
GM Defense has designed what it’s calling the Next-Generation Tactical Vehicle, taking the Chevy Silverado truck and the same Duramax engine used in the U.S. Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicle and pairing it with an electric battery capable of producing roughly 300 kilowatt hours of power output and a 15-gallon fuel tank.
Silverados come off the production line every 54 seconds. The company added an offroad package to the truck and maximized commercial-off-the-shelf features. GM also integrated “a myriad” of different advanced technologies from some of its electric vehicle programs, including the Hummer EV, and incorporated lessons garnered from its successful rapid production of the Infantry Squad Vehicle, which used a Chevy Colorado chassis.
The vehicle is transportable in a C-130 and C-17 aircraft and can be sling-loaded by a CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter or an MH-53 King Stallion helicopter. GM Defense is showing the vehicle at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, incorporating various weapons systems for defense purposes.
