Electric Vehicles

Harbinger just builds the chassis. Everything on top comes from somewhere else.

"Most medium-duty vehicles are built by one company building the chassis [and] another company installing the body," Weicker said. "So this made the perfect sense for our first product because we're going to be focused almost entirely on the differentiated aspects. We don't have to deal with the high capital investments for body in white, paint shop, [and] a lot of the things that have cost EV startups lots of money just to get to a table-stakes position with their incoming competitors."

"Where we're pricing the vehicles, we need that 45 W if we want to undercut diesel, and that's what we're doing," Harris said. "With 45 W, we can undercut the typical diesel vehicle by a few thousand dollars."

But even if that credit goes away under the current administration, Harbinger has some price flexibility to remain competitive, he added.

That's doubly true if you factor in operating costs. Harris says the average cost to operate a medium-duty vehicle like this is $0.50 per mile for fuel, or $0.85 if you factor in all costs relating to the vehicle itself. Harbinger is aiming to halve that, targeting $0.40 per mile. But, Harris says, Harbinger doesn't need to lean on that total cost of ownership (TCO) logic.