Electric vehicle startup Bollinger said it has selected its manufacturing supplier to build its next delivery van. The company will use Detroit auto supplier Roush as a contract manufacturer to assemble its line of all-electric platforms and chassis cabs for commercial vehicles.
Bollinger says it will “source and supply all materials” to Roush, which will then assemble the platforms and chassis at its facility in Livonia, Michigan, which is 20 miles from Bollinger’s Oak Park headquarters.
“We will be building state-of-the-art vehicles from day one here in Michigan,” said Robert Bollinger, founder and CEO of Bollinger Motors. “Roush has a strong engineering and assembly history, and we are excited to work with them to provide our commercial fleet customers with exceptional electric vehicles.”
Image: Bollinger
Bollinger burst onto the scene several years ago with a pair of rugged and highly attractive box-shaped electric truck prototypes: the four-door B1 (which is shaped like a Jeep Wrangler) and the B2 (which is longer and has a truck bed). The company later postponed plans to build electric trucks to focus on commercial delivery vans. It’s the latest EV startup for hit speed bumps while trying to build a complicated vehicle manufacturing business from scratch.
Partnering with Roush may help improve the status of Bollinger, which has currently been languishing in the category of startups with intriguing prototypes but no concrete plans to turn them into reality. In addition to working with established automakers for more than 30 years, Roush also helped build Self-driving ‘Firefly’ prototype cars now removed from Google and Nuro’s driverless delivery robots.
Bollinger Deliver-E electric van, which was announced in 2020, is scheduled to be built on a variable vehicle platform that allows for multiple battery sizes, such as 70kWh, 105kWh, 140kWh, 175kWh and 210kWh. This will mean that customers will have a variety of range options, prices and wheelbase sizes to choose from. The front-wheel drive platform will be designed to fit Classes 2B, 3, 4 and 5.
The company previously declined to state a start date for production of the truck, citing the search for a manufacturing partner. A spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about when manufacturing will begin.