Scotland’s Munro unveils its all-electric MK_1 pickup truck

Article content

Munro Vehicles, a startup in Scotland that’s promising the next big thing in electric off-road SUVs, has just unveiled a pickup version — although its production sport-ute isn’t expected to go on sale until 2024.

Article content

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Scotland’s Munro unveils its all-electric MK_1 pickup truck Back to video

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Play Video

The Glasgow-based company unveiled the Munro MK_1 all-terrain vehicle in December 2022, and just took the wraps off a truck version of it that’s basically the sport-ute with a pickup bed. It was shown in mid-May at the Fully Charged Live North 2023 show in Harrogate, England.

A version of that consumer show will be held in California in October, although there’s no word if the MK_1 will make it to North American shores, at least not yet. When the automaker ramps up to full production, it will likely be in the range of about 250 vehicles per year, and optimistically, says that could eventually scale up to as many as 2,500 vehicles annually in a larger factory planned for opening next year.

Article content

The pickup shares the same specs as its SUV sibling, with 295 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of torque, and up to 305 kilometres of range — or about 16 hours if you’re taking it on off-road trails. It’s four-wheel drive, of course, with front and rear rigid beam axles and a locking differential. It can tow up to 7,716 pounds and carry up to 2,315 lbs of payload.

Munro says it isn’t building its vehicles for a consumer audience, and instead is targeting commercial buyers, who’ll use it for construction, agriculture, mining or emergency response. The company can say that all it wants — we just know there’s a market filled with people who want to cruise downtown in a large-by-huge electric truck that no one else has seen before.

The pickup is expected to be priced similarly to the MK_1 utility vehicle – and its three trims range from £59,994 to £83,994 including the local value-added tax — about $101,000 to $141,000 in Canadian loonies.

Article content

Even though nothing’s yet been delivered, Munro says it has received more than 200 orders for the two models — and at its early production stages, expects it’ll need 18 months to two years to fulfill them.

The Scottish automaker also made the news in February 2023, when it found itself the target of a U.S.-based lawsuit by Michigan-based EV startup Bollinger Motors. The Munro MK_1 bears more than a striking resemblance to the Bollinger B1 utility vehicle and B2 pickup, and Bollinger says that’s because one of the men who designed them picked up his pencils and became the head designer at Munro — and took confidential design information with him. But it may be a moot point, because while Bollinger had good intentions, including a plan to start selling those vehicles to consumers in Canada in 2022, it has since “paused the development” of them and is instead concentrating on starting production of commercial electric trucks.