This isn't a production vehicle yet - and I'm pretty sure it never will be - but it's an interesting EV proposal and prototype:
Bollinger B1
Lots of press coverage is easy to find, most of it not providing any useful analysis... just search for something like "Bollinger electric truck".
Some forum members may know the company founder - Dave Bollinger - since I see that name as a Tesla owner in a couple of posts.
This is a 4WD utility vehicle, which they are very deliberately calling a "truck" rather than an "SUV". It follows the battery-as-floor-platform design pattern (although with a backbone frame), with a now-conventional drivetrain of a transverse motor at each end, with 2-stage spur gear reduction boxes and differentials. Motors are within the wheelbase (ahead of the rear axle and behind the front). Suspension is double-A-arm, with hydropneumatic suspension. Axles are portal type (geared drop boxes at the hubs) with inboard disc brakes. The structure is an unworkably expensive but cool welded fabrication of aluminum, much of it milled from billet; a production design would need to use suitable extrusions, castings, and bent sheet components; I can only guess that's their intention. The upper body can be configured (with significant effort by two people, handling it in six pieces) as a four-seat SUV or 2-seat pickup, although there is no indication of how the "mid-gate" (in GM terms) might be handled or if one even exists - none is shown in the material which I've seen.
The novel feature is the first functional use of the flat-platform pattern that I've seen. The GM Hy-wire concept had an open space end to end, but there was no safe way to use the forward space, and it relied on an entirely drive-by-wire design which is not production-worthy yet. This one has an access tunnel between the front trunk and main interior, with a level floor through them. There should be a door for the tunnel, but I didn't see one... that's just one of at many issues to be addressed to make it production-worthy, but at least this is an operating prototype (not just a computer model).
The weight ratings looked bizarre at first, until I realized that they used three-ton capacity axles to give a 10,001 pound GVWR, to put it (barely) into the Class 3 truck category (US Federal class HDV3), exempting it from various passenger-car regulations. That's like a "one ton" pickup truck, such as a GM 3500, Ram 3500, or Ford F-350. They would not want it to tow much of a trailer (since range would be terrible), so the trailer weight rating equals the payload rating: you could carry the trailer if you could crush it into a small enough block.
An interesting spec is the economy number: at "67.4 est. MPGe" it looks quite precise, but that is just the result of guessing that it might use a nice round number of 500 watt-hours per mile, and dividing that into the nominal gasoline energy content of 33.7 kWh/gallon. My guess is that two tons of vehicle with the aerodynamics of a barn door and LT285/70R17 open-tread tires will use far more energy than that.
It does look cool - like an old Land Rover.
Bollinger B1
Lots of press coverage is easy to find, most of it not providing any useful analysis... just search for something like "Bollinger electric truck".
Some forum members may know the company founder - Dave Bollinger - since I see that name as a Tesla owner in a couple of posts.
This is a 4WD utility vehicle, which they are very deliberately calling a "truck" rather than an "SUV". It follows the battery-as-floor-platform design pattern (although with a backbone frame), with a now-conventional drivetrain of a transverse motor at each end, with 2-stage spur gear reduction boxes and differentials. Motors are within the wheelbase (ahead of the rear axle and behind the front). Suspension is double-A-arm, with hydropneumatic suspension. Axles are portal type (geared drop boxes at the hubs) with inboard disc brakes. The structure is an unworkably expensive but cool welded fabrication of aluminum, much of it milled from billet; a production design would need to use suitable extrusions, castings, and bent sheet components; I can only guess that's their intention. The upper body can be configured (with significant effort by two people, handling it in six pieces) as a four-seat SUV or 2-seat pickup, although there is no indication of how the "mid-gate" (in GM terms) might be handled or if one even exists - none is shown in the material which I've seen.
The novel feature is the first functional use of the flat-platform pattern that I've seen. The GM Hy-wire concept had an open space end to end, but there was no safe way to use the forward space, and it relied on an entirely drive-by-wire design which is not production-worthy yet. This one has an access tunnel between the front trunk and main interior, with a level floor through them. There should be a door for the tunnel, but I didn't see one... that's just one of at many issues to be addressed to make it production-worthy, but at least this is an operating prototype (not just a computer model).
The weight ratings looked bizarre at first, until I realized that they used three-ton capacity axles to give a 10,001 pound GVWR, to put it (barely) into the Class 3 truck category (US Federal class HDV3), exempting it from various passenger-car regulations. That's like a "one ton" pickup truck, such as a GM 3500, Ram 3500, or Ford F-350. They would not want it to tow much of a trailer (since range would be terrible), so the trailer weight rating equals the payload rating: you could carry the trailer if you could crush it into a small enough block.
An interesting spec is the economy number: at "67.4 est. MPGe" it looks quite precise, but that is just the result of guessing that it might use a nice round number of 500 watt-hours per mile, and dividing that into the nominal gasoline energy content of 33.7 kWh/gallon. My guess is that two tons of vehicle with the aerodynamics of a barn door and LT285/70R17 open-tread tires will use far more energy than that.
It does look cool - like an old Land Rover.
