November 24, 2025 - Bollinger Finally Unplugs

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for  November 24, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

Anyone who has paid any attention to the history of the automotive industry is well aware of the fact that the vast majority of the automakers that have ever existed have gone out of business. This was especially true in the early decades of the industry in the late 19th and early 20th century when there were thousands of startup automakers just in the U.S., most of which quickly fell by the wayside. In more recent decades, the emergence of electric vehicles also brought an influx of wannabe automakers, starting with Tesla. China, in particular, has seen the emergence of hundreds of new automotive brands trying to cash in on EVs, and some of those have already failed, with many more likely in the next few years. 

Here in the U.S., we've seen Fisker start and fail twice in the last 15 years, Phoenix Motor Cars, Coda, Atlis, Nikola, Lordstown, and numerous others. Tesla is the only one that has achieved enough scale to be profitable, with Rivian and Lucid still hanging in there. 

The latest EV startup to call it quits is Bollinger Motors. Bollinger first appeared in 2015 with a boxy electric pickup and SUV with some unique features like a cabin pass-through for long objects. These got a lot of interest and attention, but not much capital. Bollinger eventually pivoted its focus to developing a medium-duty electric platform for commercial vehicles and was ultimately acquired by Mullen Automotive, yet another barely viable EV startup. Last week, news reports emerged from several outlets that Bollinger had stopped paying its bills, and employees had gone without pay for six weeks. On Friday, the head of HR at Bollinger Motors informed employees that it would be the company's last day of business. 

It's unfortunate when a startup with an interesting product fails to make it to the starting line. Building vehicles is a tough business, and it costs hundreds of millions to billions of dollars just to get the first vehicle out of the factory. Hopefully, any interesting IP that Bollinger had will get acquired and utilized by someone. 

Thanks for listening.