#bollinger

Electric vehicle startup Bollinger announced plans to double its staff on Tuesday and has opened a new headquarters substantially larger than its original building. While its previous move took the company from New York to Michigan, its latest relocation keeps it within metropolitan Detroit — specifically Oak Park, which is roughly four miles away from the old Ferndale facility.

The change is supposed to help ready the business for its upcoming B1 utility and B2 pickup, which will need additional investments to get off the ground, as well as help secure deal with a contract manufacturer. EV companies seem to have no trouble attracting investors, despite most of them looking like carbon copies of each other. All you need is an electric platform that can be shared across numerous nameplates with the least imaginative alphanumeric names imaginable and Wall Street seems happy enough.

The automotive industry’s sudden interest in all-electric pickups may have been surprising initially, but they’ve since offered a few perks that have helped us understand why companies are suddenly so smitten with the concept. When Rivian first showed its pickup in 2018, it came with some interesting storage solutions that were only possible because it doesn’t need to worry about things like a driveshaft tunnel or a crowded engine bay. We wouldn’t call them game changers but they certainly opened the door (literally) for new storage options and we’re beginning to see this take ever-more impressive forms.

Bollinger Motors has recently patented a passthrough gate that allows one to slot exceptionally long cargo all the way through the vehicle. Officially, they’re two separate patents that work in tandem to allow pickup owners a spot to stash up to 16 feet of lumber — or more if one doesn’t mind it hanging out the front and/or back of the vehicle. Just be sure to tie things down so you don’t accidentally create a brake-launched tarmac torpedo.