GM invests US$2 billion to make its electric truck a reality

The electric car market is mature enough to be expanding, and the next category that carmakers have in their sight is the truck.

Tesla beat most of the competition with the announcement of its CyberTruck, but that hasn’t stopped legacy automakers from jumping headfirst onto the e-car bandwagon.

Next to announce its intentions for an electric truck is GM, which just invested US$2 billion in electric car making startup Nikola (so named after Nikola Tesla – we guess Elon Musk beat him to the punch on that one).

GM will get 11 per cent of the burgeoning company, as well as access to research and technology. It will also be exchanging stock, which will allow both companies to accelerate production of its Nikola Badger pickup truck – which will go into electric trucks, cars and motorbikes.

“General Motors is one of the top engineering and manufacturing companies in the world,” Nikola founder and executive chairman, Trevor Milton, said in a press release. “You couldn’t dream of a better partnership than this.”

Nikola is perhaps the most talked-about electric vehicle startup since Tesla, and the brand has consistently focused its efforts on trucks.

Nikola has made semi-truck models previously, and GM obviously sees this as a category with lots of room to grow.

Nikola’s Badger pickup is due to make its international debut in December.

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