16 ms·

Bollinger B2 Electric Pickup Truck

• stevespang 7y ago
  No giant computer screen on the dash so you can play video games like Teslas ?
• bryanlarsen 7y ago
  $125,000
  • hinkley 7y ago
    But on the plus side you can joust with telephone poles with this thing.
  • vortico 7y ago
    Also the B1 is estimated to be this price.
  • yellowapple 7y ago
    Yep. I've been on the reservation list for the B1 for what feels like forever (IIRC right around when it was first announced), figuring "this thing looks simple and minimalist enough that I'm sure Bollinger can keep the price reasonable". Last month's MSRP announcement immediately dashed any desire to buy this vehicle new. Maybe some of these will hit the used market in a decade or so and I'll be able to swap out the aging batteries for whatever the latest-and-greatest is in 2030, but as it stands I ain't willing to take out a fucking mortgage for a pickup. I've got my eye on the Atlis XT and the Cybertruck (in that order). Both seem to be very reasonably priced, though Altis is probably the bigger unknown. I've also got my eye on the DIY approach of converting an old pickup myself, though that'll have to wait until I've got a decent work space.
• 0wl3x 7y ago
  I think this might be a close second in ugliness to the Tesla Truck. Why can't have an electric Toyota Tacoma? Or an F150 or a Chevy Colorado?
  • crooked-v 7y ago
    If a company makes an electric clone of the F-150, it'll lose all its sales as soon as an actual electric F-150 is released.
  • manigandham 7y ago
    Ford is working on an electric F-150 prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXFHgoon7lg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXFHgoon7lg And considering it's the electric drivetrain that adds all the main features (performance, tow capacity, torque, electrical outlets, etc), they could easily close the gap with Tesla. It remains to be seen on how much people care about the styling and hardened steel body though.
    • generatorguy 7y ago
      Forgot range. Which depends on weight. Which is saved by the battery enclosure being a structural member of the vehicle. I think to make a decent electric truck it will take more than strapping some batteries under the box and swapping ice for electric.
  • roberto8647 7y ago
    Check out the Rivian, it's a great looking electric truck in my opinion. https://rivian.com/ https://rivian.com/
    • dmix 7y ago
      Great looking - everything but the cutesy front headlights. I'd slightly prefer a blacked out Tesla truck to that. The main problem with the front/back of the Cybertruck is the it's very flat and plain where even a licence plate or name decal would make it look better. But I have a feeling it will look better in person than online.
      • crooked-v 7y ago
        > everything but the cutesy front headlights I think I agree. I feel like it'd like it better if the headlights were inset as vertical stripes rather than rounded.
• VectorLock 7y ago
  Only twice as much as the top of the line Tesla Cybertruck.
  • steve19 7y ago
    Not to mention less range and less towing capacity. But to be fair, it is a farm truck not for running kids to school. It has quite a bit more payload capacity (3500 vs 5000 lbs)
• motohagiography 7y ago
  Likely a distinct lack of crossover between HN readers and the Land Rover Defender crowd that Bollinger looks like they are targeting. The main use case is for a ranch or large farm property. Probably great for the Caribbean as well. Would buy a Bollinger over a defender in a minute because it's a 30 year+ farm vehicle. Was really excited to read about them. Could see people balking at the $125k price tag, but at that price point there is already a mass market for dated german sedans and artifacts of imagined british nostalgia supported by a hackneyed movie franchise. Something useful and durable would be a relief.
  • pclark 7y ago
    why would you buy this over a 4runner or tacoma for a large farm property? (or the new defender) i am curious and kind of skeptical that electric vehicles will ever get the longevity of combustion engine toyotas and such, given the nascent battery technology. am i wrong? will a Model S outlast a Subaru?
    • vvanders 7y ago
      Why wouldn't they outlast? I'm not sure if hold up Subarus as the paragon of reliability given the headgasket issues that plagued certain years.
    • motohagiography 7y ago
      Figure you will be able to swap in new battery tech in 10 years. The price point is mainly about aesthetics and ideas, so the practical argument is mainly self justification for me. Personally, I'd imagine powering a Bollinger from a power wall and generator connected to a biogas digester that runs off the muck pile of a small horse or dairy farm.
      • danans 7y ago
        > Personally, I'd imagine powering a Bollinger from a power wall and generator connected to a biogas digester that runs off the muck pile of a small horse or dairy farm. If you control the timing of the supply of energy via the burning of the biodigested muck, why go through the Powerwall? The Bollinger's battery is 10x the capacity of the Powerwall. If you charge it directly from your generator, you don't have to pay the round trip charging losses of the Powerwall. The only reason to use the Powerwall is to exploit solar power by charging the Powerwall during the day, and then drawing upon it at night to charge the truck. Also note that according to this article [1] from Penn State University, all the reclaimable energy from dairy cow waste in Pennsylvania would only provide for 20% of energy used on Pennsylvania dairy farms. So it's not like there is going to be a surplus of electricity to charge your car. It would make more sense to use the biogas directly for the dairy operation, because you can potentially use both the electricity and heat from burning biogas to, for example, heat and power the cow sheds in winter, vs using that electricity to power a truck. The truck could get its electricity directly from solar, or from the grid. 1. https://extension.psu.edu/biogas-from-manure https://extension.psu.edu/biogas-from-manure
• valley-green 7y ago
  I’ll get two cybertrucks that run a 2.9 second 0-60 instead.
• Junk_Collector 7y ago
  Am I the only one who notices that you can't throw a board in the bed without strapping it because all of the modern trucks have 6 ft beds instead of 8 ft?
  • frosted-flakes 7y ago
    The Bollinger has a pass-through opening through the cab (between the seats) and into the front cargo area under the hood. Obviously you can't fit a whole skid of 2x4s in there, but you can fit some really long stuff that pickup trucks otherwise can't really handle. Edit: the linked page says it can fit 40 2x4s through the pass-through, and 72 sheets of half-inch plywood when the rear seats are removed. Also, with the tailgate down, it can carry 19' material fully supported.
  • cydonian_monk 7y ago
    This was actually one of the reasons I ended up going with a (hybrid) RAV4 instead of a smaller pickup. I don't need a pickup for durability reasons (98% of the time I'm on paved surface), but I do need a way to move board as I do a fair bit of carpentry. In the RAV4 I can put the seats down and fit plenty of 8+ ft anything as long as it's not wider than the front passenger seat + center console. Most pickups in the price range I could afford had only 3.5 to 4.5 foot beds, since crew cabs have eaten all of our small trucks, while a few others had "almost" 6 ft. Major downside of the RAV is I can't fit 4x8 sheets of anything and I don't have a tailgate to drop to make it work. In those cases I just find a friend with a larger vehicle who is available instead, or if I don't need the sheets to be whole I have them ripped at the lumberyard where I bought them. The moveable wall and full passthrough in this B2 truck looks like a really good deal.
  • abakker 7y ago
    well, for really long stuff, pickup people with 6ft beds get ladder racks. with 8-10ft boards I just leave the tailgate up and put the boards in there at an angle. If I need to get on the highway, a single ratchet strap ensures they don't move around. personally, I had an 8 ft pickup, and I don't really think the day to day is that much different. With longer stuff - 14-16ft trim, or 20ft sticks of steel, you're basically stuck with ladder racks anyway, so no big deal. A ladder rack on a small truck vs having a real, functional rack on an SUV might be good either way.
• jiofih 7y ago
  Interesting how dated it looks after the Tesla announcement, ugly as the Cybertruck is. Wheels, door panels, steering wheel, everything looks a bit too traditional. Maybe that was one of their goals, but will be a shame if it ends up driving healthy competitors out of business.
• jdkdnfndnfjd 7y ago
  And people said the Cybertruck was ugly...
• georgeoliver 7y ago
  It's too bad we won't see a new electric light pickup (i.e. Ranger, Dakota) with a 7 foot bed anytime soon. Hopefully the conversion market will catch up.
• tus88 7y ago
  I wonder how they can copy Land Rover like that and get away with it.
• k_sze 7y ago
  I’m not a mechanical engineer by any means. But all aluminium body in that squary shape? That seems like asking to be dented. I wonder what aluminium alloy they use (and how thick it is). Can any real mechanical engineer comment on that?
  • jjoonathan 7y ago
    I'm no MechE or machinist, but I do bang out parts on a mill / lathe on a regular basis, and I've noticed a huge disconnect between the shop attitude towards Steel / Aluminum / Titanium and the public attitude. ==== In the Shop ==== Aluminum is the "newbie" metal: cheap, light, soft, weak, easy (to machine, to protect from corrosion). Steel is the "adult" metal: strong and resilient, but heavy and requires more care to machine, heat treat, and protect from corrosion. Titanium is the "pro" metal: as strong as steel and as light as aluminum. Expensive and difficult to machine, though. DISCLAIMER: These are all gigantic simplifications. Alloy, heat treatment, mass/volume denominators, coatings, geometry, and economic considerations can absolutely upset this ordering. ==== In Public ==== Aluminum is the space age advanced metal. Steel is obsolete. Titanium is Aluminum.
    • ScottFree 7y ago
      > Titanium is Aluminum. I thought the public view of titanium was similar to adamantium or unobtanium. It's not an option because it's too expensive to use in a "normal" car. It's something that gets used in 100k+ supercars and formula 1 cars.
      • jjoonathan 7y ago
        I suspect anyone into cars, bikes, or aircraft is aware of titanium's status as a paragon material, but the general public is less informed than that. I regularly see people miss the implication of an Al -> Ti or Ti -> Al material substitution and I semi-regularly see Al and Ti confused outright. It seems almost sacrilegious to someone in-the-know, but most people just don't seem to know or care. As far as they are concerned, aluminum is titanium is aluminum is titanium. Shrug.
    • 7y ago
• stopnamingnuts 7y ago
  That's a lot of frunk.
• xyst 7y ago
  The old school hummer look is back, I suppose
• mattmaroon 7y ago
  The Tesla Cybertruck and this are built by people who don't drive pickups and don't know why people really drive pickups. $125k and can only tow half of what a $30k F-150 can? For real? Half tons by the 2021 model year will be pushing 15,000 lbs. towing capacity. The last 5 years have seen almost a 50% increase. The market has responded really well. People want a half ton (ride characteristics and price) that can tow like a 3/4 ton.
  • unethical_ban 7y ago
    No one who doesn't tow, actually gives a shit about towing capacity. With gas engines, towing = torque = power = horsepower = acceleration in the ads. The casual F-150 driver who throws some bikes or a grass pallet in the back doesn't need 15,000 lbs of towing. They like that the truck moves quickly and can haul their 3,500 lb boat. I think the price/performance of the Tesla kicks the shit out of this vehicle, but there are markets for most things.
    • Aloha 7y ago
      I think the CyberTrunk will prove expensive to build, and on a very practical level not a very good trunk. I'm trying to figure out who exactly the cybertruck is for - it reminds me of the Pontiac Aztek.
      • unethical_ban 7y ago
        It is for people who want * a bed to carry bikes and coolers and bulky shit * the acceleration of a sports car * the ability to go over a curb without messing up the vehicle It is just a bit too expensive for me (I spent $25k on a car six years ago and I plan to hold on to it for another 4) but if I were in the market for a $40-50k truck, I would look at this and the Ram offroad similarly.
      • danans 7y ago
        > I'm trying to figure out who exactly the cybertruck is for It's for the same people who buy most pickups and SUVs now - i.e. not tradespeople or people on farms. Instead most of these will spend their time sitting in gridlocked traffic on the way to and from the office or shopping mall in places like Dallas, Silicon Valley, New Jersey. Pickup trucks are very versatile vehicles, and we live in a society where people like to carry lots of stuff with them, whether or not they truly need to. A few weekends a year, the cargo space will be filled with gear to go glamping or skiing (hence the glamping scene on the cybertruck website), or other upper middle class pursuit, but more frequently visiting a winery or other rural tourist attraction. A few other weekends, it will carry bags of mulch from the garden center, or the kids' bikes. I'm not mocking those use cases. Minus the gridlock traffic to work (I'm lucky - I take a train), that pretty much describes what my family uses our small SUV for now.
• dzhiurgis 7y ago
  How are these things "most capable" but missing essentials like USB-C socket (at least 50W)?
  • paranoidrobot 7y ago
    I think if I was spending this much on a truck, I'd rather they provided 110/220V AC rather than a USB-C socket. Much wider capability and compatibility.
    • dzhiurgis 7y ago
      Why not both?:)
      • paranoidrobot 7y ago
        Because USB standards progress so rapidly and standard AC sockets don't. There's also the durability issue. A standard AC socket is easy to wire/replace, a USB socket isn't.
        • dzhiurgis 7y ago
          USB-A has been around well over 20 years and C will likely to stay more. Sure the car will last way longer, but there are tons of much more gimmicky stuff being added (most obvious one is infotainment that will be obsolete in 3 years).
  • natosaichek 7y ago
    It's got 10 ac outlets. Plug in your favorite charger?
• userbinator 7y ago
  I like that it has a very "DIY" aesthetic, almost like a custom vehicle, and there's nothing about the design that screams "I'm an EV!" unlike some of the other EVs out there. The square design would blend in with other vehicles from the 70s. The simple dashboard (like a lot of custom cars, e.g. http://www.fastlanerodshop.com/George34ford/George34ford_dash.htm http://www.fastlanerodshop.com/George34ford/George34ford_das... ) with an actual analogue speedometer is nice too. I wonder if it's mechanically driven and thus wouldn't even need the truck to be "on" to work. Hopefully the whole vehicle is as serviceable as it looks --- the lack of any huge touchscreen is a good sign that there's probably not a DRM-encrusted computer controlling everything, although I doubt it has "true old-school" analog motor electronics either.