Bollinger Motors announced Wednesday that it has filed for patent protection for its electric trucks, as the company moves toward expected announcements of the models’ production location and partner company. 

The filings include mechanical and electrical architecture of the vehicles, the electric drivetrain, its modes of operation and configurability, and the “multiple embodiments” (body styles) on a common vehicle platform. 

Bollinger revealed its production-bound prototype versions of the B1 electric SUV and B2 electric pickup in September, then announced in October that the starting price for its electric trucks will be $125,000, with deliveries to start in 2021.

“Our team has created a vehicle that’s engineered and packaged unlike anything ever built,” says CEO Robert Bollinger, in a release accompanying the announcement. 

Last fall CEO Robert Bollinger told Green Car Reports that he realized in developing the trucks that the company needed more control, so he bulked up the company’s engineering resources and reduced the use of separate engineering firms. He called Bollinger Motors “a small, nimble, powerful engineering and R&D and prototyping company.”

Chassis of Bollinger electric off-road utility truck

The trucks themselves were designed by Bollinger to be mostly hand-assembled; they’ll be made by a separate company that hasn’t yet been named. Bollinger has targeted a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds from a dual-motor system making a combined 614 horsepower and 668 pound-feet of torque. 

They’ll all be designated heavy-duty Class 3 trucks—a category that doesn’t require a crash-testing and omits some safety features like airbags.

Patent filings are a normal part of vehicle development, and as we know from the wide range of patents that are filed for things like lasers to blast away windshield debris, not all patents make it to production.