Category: Smaller Companies
10/01/2021
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Chinese Foxconn buying Lordstown Auto
The Lordstown auto plant, once owned by General Motors and purchased by startup Lordstown Motors for $20 million, is being purchased by Chinese electronics firm Foxconn, best known for assembling most Apple products. Foxconn has been expanding in the United States, largely at Apple’s behest, and some see the move as paving the way for […]
09/28/2021
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Rivian starts making trucks, Lucid making cars, GM making e-vans
Two weeks ago, Rivian started making electric pickup trucks, the first automaker in North America to produce them for sale to the general public in the 21st century; they’re coming off a line in Normal, Illinois, that used to make Mitsubishis under the Dodge, Mitsubishi, Eagle, and Plymouth brands. GM announced today that it has […]
03/25/2021
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Old AM General plant to make Sokon vans for Electric Last Mile
A former AM General plant, sold to the American branch of a Chinese automaker, has been resold to a Michigan-based company—which will, it appears, use it to assemble electric vans from Chinese parts. Vans were the last “normal” electric vehicles, particularly in Britain, where they picked up goods from rail yards and deliver them to […]
03/14/2021
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The big electric pickup list, updated
Here are all the electric pickups we know about, in one table. We are reporting what we know about; there are things we don’t know about. Not everything is comparable to gasoline powered cars (e.g. torque at the wheels). Most of these figures are not final, and some may be hyperbole. Electric car companies have realized […]
08/02/2020
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2020 – no, wait, 2021 – maybe 2022 is when the flood of good electric vehicles is coming
Lucid Air starts production next year, and Rivian will be pumping out tens of thousands of Amazon vans and maybe some Ford-badged pickups and other vehicles. But the electric vehicle world will really be hopping in 2022, when all the various new electric car companies will either be running at full speed, or at least be […]
03/21/2020
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Bad timing for the electric pickup party
Several startups and some major players are trying to pump out electric pickups, but it seems as though time may have run out on them. Thanks partly to the coronavirus outbreak, coupled with a stock market bubble and an incredibly overleveraged (over-indebted) corporate world, there may be few people who can buy their products when […]
03/12/2020
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Luxury-electric Bollinger to have electric “skateboards” for other automakers
Do you want to make commercial vehicles or perhaps specialty trucks, but need an electric powertrain and chassis? Bollinger will come to your rescue, with its E-Chassis. This “skateboard” is a frame, suspension, and powertrain set up for Class 3 trucks (akin to Ram 3500 and Ford F-350). Serving suggestion If, say, Ram wanted to […]
03/10/2020
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Lucid racing to get sports car on the road
Lucid Air, which started by delivering electric-car technology to other companies and is now preparing what might be the most sleek, attractive electric car on the market, is racing to get its Arizona factory built with speed not seen since World War II. Other companies bought factories from GM, Mitsubishi, and Toyota; Lucid is building […]
02/21/2020
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Lucid Air, possibly most efficient and attractive electric, showing at NYC
Lucid Motors’ first car, the Lucid Air, will appear in April at the New York Auto Show. The Silicon Valley automaker developed its own powertrain technologies, and reportedly has the world’s most efficient electric engine: the range is predicted to be 400 miles (easily beating any Tesla), without extra-large battery packs. The company claims its […]
02/19/2020
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Comparing all the electric pickups
Here are all the electric pickups we know about, in one table. There are many blank spots, and not every factoid is final or definite or even on the same scale; for example, GM’s release on its Hummer lists torque at the wheels, but that doesn’t correspond easily to the SAE torque we’re used to […]