zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Culture
/
I Remain Hopeful That Bollinger Can Pull This Off
I Remain Hopeful That Bollinger Can Pull This Off-July 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:12:35

Image for article titled I Remain Hopeful That Bollinger Can Pull This Off

It’s time to do my monthly check-in on Bollinger, the electric truck startup that I . Bollinger so far has forged a path of sensible progress, as opposed to—to use two recent examples— and . Founder Robert Bollinger said this week its slow and steady strategy wasn’t changing.

That’s because in today’s electric truck start-up world, the stock market, simply speaking, isn’t acting very rationally. You have companies like Nikola, which has no revenue, at one point than Ford, which has plenty of revenue. There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest is Tesla, since Tesla’s stock price continues to be sky high, a rising tide lifting all boats.

All of which must be awfully tempting for a private company like Bollinger, since it could go public like Nikola did and rake in a windfall—money that presumably Bollinger could then plow into research and development to get its B1 SUV and B2 truck to market quicker. And then, once the trucks are here, profits.

It sounds easy, right? That , after all. Except Bollinger founder Robert Bollinger this week that it wouldn’t be pursuing that option for now. Instead, the plan is to stay private, raise a smaller amount of money—$50 million—from fewer investors and generally just try not to lose its nerve.

Bollinger wants to make sure it can actually deliver on its trucks, in any case, before going public. That doesn’t necessarily mean deliveries, specifically, but at the very least have sewn-up plans with manufacturers to build the B1 and B2, since Bollinger won’t be building the trucks themselves.

Bollinger said he’s so far spurned advances from SPACs he declined to name. He’d rather wait until he has agreements with existing manufacturers in place to build his planned commercial trucks and delivery vans. That will raise the value of his company before selling a stake.

Becoming a public company brings scrutiny and pressure from investors. In the past two months, short sellers have targeted clean-truck startups Nikola and Workhorse. A Sept. 10 report on Nikola called the company a fraud and sent the shares tumbling 25 percent in two days. The SPAC VectoIQ acquired Nikola in June on the promise of its hydrogen-fuel-cell freight trucks. Founder Trevor Milton departed the chairman’s seat on Sept. 21, following accusations in the report that Nikola had no working technology.

“A SPAC is wonderful because they drop a ton of money in your lap,” Bollinger said. “The downside is that being public is a lot more work. If we sell to a SPAC, it will be after the dust settles on Nikola.”

The Wall Street Journal is much more qualified than me , so I won’t be getting into that here, but suffice to say it’s a shortcut to becoming a company like Nikola, which very well could be worth the billions of dollars it is on paper but for now is very, very far from passing the eye test.

Bollinger, meanwhile, checks a lot of the boxes for me. The company is small—just 44 employees—and its ambitions aren’t to take over the world. It has an opportunity to take the easy money and so far has resisted, which makes it seem all the more serious about actually following through. Any start-up, at any rate, that looks at Nikola and Lordstown Motors and Workforce and says, “Yeah I’ll think we’ll be doing the opposite of that,” has a chance.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Culture
Ford Mondeo: Dead
Ford Mondeo: Dead
Pour one out for the Ford Mondeo. The Fusion was finally discontinued last summer, and now the Blue Oval that it’ll pull the plug of one of its UK mainstays in March 2022. The Mondeo is no more. This isn’t surprising. I mistakenly thought the Mondeo was already dead,...
Jul 23, 2026
Audi RS6 Avants Are Already Getting Flipped, But Maybe You Should Avoid Those Cars Anyway
Audi RS6 Avants Are Already Getting Flipped, But Maybe You Should Avoid Those Cars Anyway
The Audi RS6 Avant is the longroof of dreams, and being a hot new car in high demand opportunists. Dig into the sales history of some of the low-mile examples now available, though, and you’ll learn something surprising: It’s not just lone-wolf predators playing the market. Canadian dealers are...
Jul 23, 2026
The Feds Were Asking Lordstown Motors Questions Weeks Before Short-Seller's Report
The Feds Were Asking Lordstown Motors Questions Weeks Before Short-Seller's Report
Earlier this month, a short-selling firm called Hindenburg Research released a , accusing them of faking orders and exaggerating its progress on production. A few days after that, Lordstown acknowledged the SEC’s interest, but according to a new filing from the company the SEC was interested well before the...
Jul 23, 2026
What We Talk About When We Talk About 'Underpowered'
What We Talk About When We Talk About 'Underpowered'
“Underpowered” is a vague word that car reviewers like to use to assert their authority on what a car should be like (and to remind you that they’ve driven a Ferrari one time). That’s a problem, because in practical terms “underpowered” is virtually meaningless. Power is a flexible concept....
Jul 23, 2026
Over Two Thirds Of Drivers Arrested By U.S. Border Patrol In Michigan Were Stopped For Looking At Squad Cars Funny
Over Two Thirds Of Drivers Arrested By U.S. Border Patrol In Michigan Were Stopped For Looking At Squad Cars Funny
Detroit is home to the busiest land border crossing in North America, responsible for roughly Naturally it has a robust U.S. Border Patrol presence, but the lengths that this federal law enforcement agency will take to stop anyone who even looks at them funny should be horrifying to every...
Jul 23, 2026
Lordstown Motors Just Showed One Reason GM Was Surprisingly Willing To Back The EV Startup
Lordstown Motors Just Showed One Reason GM Was Surprisingly Willing To Back The EV Startup
With the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission now requesting voluntary information from the electric pickup truck startup Lordstown Motors, more details of the arrangement between the company and one of its key backers, General Motors, are coming to light. One big bonus in the deal for GM was a...
Jul 23, 2026
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved