Years after Scrapping Its Original Plans, Bollinger Is Finally Delivering Vehicles

• The Bollinger B4 is a class 4 chassis cab built by Roush in Livonia, Michigan.
  

• Bollinger is close to delivering its first production B4 trucks to customers.

• Bollinger B4 BEV trucks start at $158,758, without destination, handling, or fees.

After pivoting away from a highly anticipated pickup truck and SUV, the team behind Bollinger went strictly commercial. Conveniently lining up with the Bollinger naming conventions—the company’s original vehicles were dubbed B1 an B2—this B4 rig also slots into the Class 4 trucking world and could help push Bollinger back into relevancy.

Powering this BEV Class 4 rig is a pair of 79-kWh battery packs that work together to give the B4 158 kWh of electric power. This battery pack feeds a Dana eAxle at the rear, which throws 323 hp and 675 lb-ft of torque through the dual rear wheels. According to Bollinger, this rig is good for 200 miles worth of range, but naturally, that’s going to be affected by your payload.

On a loop around a parking lot, the Bollinger B4 felt very much like driving any conventional unladen flatbed truck. Power delivery is what you’d expect from a battery-electric vehicle, with immediate power on tip-in. The sound isolation and management might be behind the curve of its passenger car and Class 8 cohorts, but internal combustion Class 4 rigs aren’t exactly the beacon of luxury, either.

Steering is light, and the short stint behind the wheel showed that the brake system works as expected. Regenerative braking is currently locked by the vehicle, but a software update to make it adjustable is apparently on the way.

The sightlines were also fine, but how you upfit this rig might have a bigger impact on your backup ability. There is a backup camera, too, but it wasn’t currently synced up with the transmission switchgear. The gear selector looked like it was inspired by the rotary dial found on a variety of Ford products.

Of course, those that driving this will likely be doing so on the clock, so the actual driving dynamics are almost less important than the whole situation surrounding this truck. Built in the Roush facility in Livonia, Michigan, the Bollinger B4 comes to life much like a hand-built hypercar. The company eschews automation because, at the smaller scale, it doesn’t make sense.

The small assembly line at full steam can churn out thousands of these a year. The small batch approach might also explain the high price tag: $158,785. Of course, with commercial vehicles like this, a steep invoice price is almost expected, but that’s still a spendy rig.

There are some benefits with service costs and ease of use that might help offset the push for EVs, and there are always tax credits for adopting battery-electric commercial vehicles at state and federal levels.

Getting the B4 to its dealer network—and eventually customers—will also help springboard the upcoming B5 production. If these two commercial vehicles are a success, there’s still an inkling that Bollinger could shift back into the consumer-facing space. However, it’s still too soon to tell if something akin to the Bollinger B2 will ever fill a dealership showroom.

Do you think Bollinger pivoting to commercial vehicles was a good idea? Tell us your thoughts below.