Lordstown Motors is doing all it can to stick to the rollout schedule for its battery-electric Endurance pickup. Last month, the startup invited a small group of media to its new production facility in Lordstown, Ohio, to poke around the truck's internals. Those guests got to see videos of Lordstown Motors President and CEO Steve Burns driving the Endurance on a development track. The company's released the vids to the public as part of an ongoing series documenting the truck's progress, giving us a decent look at the undercarriage and the in-wheel hub motors that separate this particular EV from the competition. The first clip is a 12-second montage of a development mule romping through various spots on the track. The "Alpha" test vehicle is a camouflaged Chevrolet Silverado body over a Lordstown Motors chassis.

The second, 16-second video is a single shot of the hub motor that the company calls "In-Wheel Drive" as the Endurance traverses a muddy track. It looks, at the very least, counterintuitive to have electric motors hung at the end of beam axles with leaf springs, but Lordstown says it's done its homework. Burns noted, "Over the past 10 years we’ve developed a high degree of confidence in our In-Wheel Drive System. The system has been tested through every imaginable environment and has proven to be extremely durable. Such was the case when I drove the Alpha body for the first time."

The production truck is expected to employ four of those motors producing a total 600 horsepower and an as-yet-unknown amount of torque, good for a tow rating of 6,000 pounds. They'll get their juice from a battery produced in-house, estimated to be between 70 and 80 kWh, enough to provide at least 200 miles of go.

The public debut had been planned for the now-canceled Detroit Auto Show, and market launch remains scheduled for late this year but will depend on how current affairs evolve. A company statement explained, "We are working to maintain our schedule, which is dependent upon the performance of our partners and suppliers, who we are working with each day to stay on course and limit the impact of COVID-19. We are continuing to monitor the situation and prioritizing the health and safety of our workers and community as we do."

Whenever production lines start running, Lordstown apparently has thousands of pre-orders to fulfill. About 750 of those orders come from local Ohio enterprises, Clean Fuels Ohio and FirstEnergy, and 6,000 pre-orders have been lifted from the Workhorse Group based in Cincinnati. As the local Tribune Chronicle newspaper explained, the Endurance is a reworked, pure EV version of the Workhorse W-15 EREV pickup, and, "The agreement is part of a partnership between the companies that lets Lordstown Motors use Workhorse technology to produce the Endurance in exchange for Workhorse holding 10 percent of Lordstown Motors."

Due to interruptions caused by the ongoing spread of the coronavirus and resulting COVID-19 pandemic, Lordstown Motors has announced it is pushing back the target date for deliveries of its Endurance electric pickup truck. Plans to unveil the truck this summer, however, remain on track.

In an open letter, Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns provided an update on where the company currently stands in its development and production process for the upcoming Endurance electric pickup truck. Doing their parts to help stop the escalation of the coronavirus, many Lordstown employees have been working from home. However, essential maintenance has continued at the plant, and design engineers have continued to test and tune the technologies that will make the Endurance go.

The current delays have forced Lordstown to reevaluate its timeline for getting the Endurance to the public. Deliveries of the Endurance were previously slated to begin December 2020, but that projection has now been moved slightly back to January 2021. Lordstown had also planned to debut the final production vehicle at Detroit's 2020 North American International Auto Show, but because that has been canceled, the truck will be revealed "in early summer, probably via a virtual reveal from our headquarters in Lordstown," Burns said. "More on those plans as they solidify in the next month or so."

In addition to an update on product scheduling, Burns also added that he and the company have arrived at "two big revelations" during these trying times:

1. Our mission to electrify commercial trucks is even more important than we thought. I think everyone realizes that as tough as it is to stay home, the experience would be much worse - almost unsurvivable - if commercial trucks didn’t keep rolling. Trucks bring supplies, workers and tools to stores and to our homes.
2. The air quality satellite images that are showing the results of having less tailpipe emissions are staggering. Anyone that ever doubted that our air quality could be cleaned up dramatically by eliminating tailpipe emissions should now be cheering for the advent of vehicle electrification - especially truck electrification.

These ideas are far from new, but the see-it-to-believe-it folks have recently been presented with some stark evidence.

When the Endurance does arrive to customers, it's expected to use four in-hub motors to make approximately 600 horsepower while maintaining at least 200 miles of range on a single charge. Read more about the Endurance's technology in our full report. Below is a video playlist focused on the testing of the Endurance.

Lordstown Motors is making good on its promise to unveil the Endurance electric pickup truck this summer, announcing that its maiden product will be introduced during a company meeting the week of June 22, video of which will be released to the public by month’s end.

In a blog post, CEO Steve Burns explained that the original plans were to unveil the truck in June at the Detroit auto show, which was canceled because of the coronavirus outbreak. “It’s not how we’d envisioned unveiling the Endurance, but in the absence of being able to gather a large crowd to see it in-person, this is the next best thing,” Burns wrote.

Burns also used the post to provide updates on preparing the Lordstown factory complex for the start of pre-production later this year. He said workers were finalizing the prototype vehicle battery, with an integrator chosen that has started engineering the semi-automated equipment line. Integration work has also begun on areas like the body shop, general assembly, motor lines and paint shop, with demolition of around 200,000 square feet to make space for lines to build the battery and motors.

“The progress made so far is a testament to the fact that we started in a fully equipped 6 million square foot plant, which meant we were able to get to work right away creating the lines we need to build the Endurance,” Burns wrote.

Lordstown is retooling the idled former General Motors factory in Ohio after receiving a $40 million loan from the Detroit-based automaker in December. The Detroit Free Press recently reported that Lordstown currently employs around 70 people, mostly engineers, and including a team of 20 who work in a design studio in Ford’s backyard in Dearborn, Mich. making clay models of future vehicles, with the remainder working on retooling the plant. The goal is to make 30 pre-production versions of the Endurance by December.

The Endurance will feature four in-hub electric motors, making a combined 600 horsepower, and a battery of unknown capacity, with at least 200 miles of driving range on offer. The company has said that charging on a Level 2 charger takes 10 hours to replenish the battery to 90% capacity (full specs as known are here). It will start at $52,000 before $7,500 federal tax credits for EVs.

The company has also delayed its first deliveries to January 2021, from December of this year. It has already opened the books for reservations for private customers and fleet operators and is targeting production of 20,000 units in the first year.

Notices about official, virtual unveilings are coming fast and furious, now that many states are relaxing coronavirus stay-at-home orders and companies are bringing back workers. The latest is Lordstown Motors, the startup that plans to use a former General Motors plant in the Ohio city of the same name to make the Endurance electric pickup truck. It will make the official, online unveiling of the pre-production prototype on Thursday, June 25.

To tide us over through a week's worth of anticipation, Lordstown released sketches that give us our first-ever look inside the battery-electric fleet work truck. Most notably, they show a large, longitudinal screen with the steering wheel positioned on the left side, suggesting that it will serve double duty as digital instrument cluster and infotainment touchscreen.

Below it, on the center stack, there are three knobs and what is labeled as a push-button shifter, with switches clearly labeled with the PRNDL gears (plus a sixth switch we can't quite make out). Another sketch shows a dial shifter on the center console, suggesting there may be two different ways to switch gears, while another rendering of the dashboard gives a different treatment to the center stack altogether, with one knob replacing the trio. IAdded together, the conflicting sketches could mean either that there will be different layouts with different trim levels, or, more likely, that Lordstown hasn’t quite settled on a final interior design.

Also shown in different treatments is the badge on the steering wheel, which in one sketch reads LMC, for Lordstown Motor Corp., and bears a more abstract shield-type logo on another. The center console appears to have a retractable cover, so you can slide it back when you want to use the two cupholders or dial shifter. A sketch of the front door panel tells us it will be equipped with a bottle holder.

Lordstown on Tuesday announced it had partnered with Orange County, California-based Hydra Design Labs to handle design and prototyping of the electric work truck. The company also collaborated with Lordstown on the general design of the interior and exterior, and it will build the full-scale prototype show car.

“Our goal with designing the Endurance was to create a rugged platform that could deliver on the demands of fleet-duty pickups,” said Jon Hull, Hydra’s founder and president. “We were able to leverage the layout of the electric drivetrain to explore unique new design solutions. A pickup truck design requires a certain level of familiarity and unity, yet the Endurance is clearly a bold step forward in terms of shape and form.”

Lordstown says it will livestream the reveal on its YouTube channel. Meanwhile, the company has been fast at work retooling the massive former GM Lordstown assembly plant to meet its ambitious goals of becoming the first production battery-electric pickup on the market. Production remains on track to start in late 2020, with first deliveries going out in the first quarter of 2021.

About a month after the electric pickup truck's official debut, we finally get a clear look at the 2021 Lordstown Motors Endurance's interior. It's still technically a design rendering, but it's one that's more indicative of the final product than just conceptual sketches.

The interior has a very chunky, truck-like design overall with beveled edges and straight lines throughout. The only curves are the radii on the corners of various trim pieces and the circular horn button on the steering wheel. There's an interesting diamond-stamped steel pattern on the section of dash dividing the climate controls and the air vents. Those air vents are also located in a trim piece that sweeps upward on either side of the top of the dash, echoing the exterior design. Instruments and infotainment are displayed in what's becoming a ubiquitous layout of dual screens mounted in one wide monolith.

The Endurance is slated to go on sale next summer. Pricing has been set at $52,500, and it will be eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit. It diverges from other electric pickup truck designs by using four hub-motors, one for each wheel, rather than dual motors with single-speed transmissions and axle shafts to power the wheels. Lordstown Motors claims 600 horsepower from the quartet of motors. It's also a traditional body-on-frame pickup truck with a solid rear axle. Range is claimed to be over 250 miles and it features support for DC fast charging with a 90% charge possible in 30 to 90 minutes on said charging. The company intends to deliver 20,000 trucks next year.

(Reuters) - Lordstown Motors has agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check company DiamondPeak Holdings in a deal that values the electric pickup truck start-up at $1.6 billion, the companies said on Monday.

The combined company will be called Lordstown Motors Corp following the closure of the deal in the fourth quarter and will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “RIDE,” the companies said.

A blank-check company is a shell company that raises money through an initial public offering to buy an operating entity, typically within two years.

A bunch of electric vehicle makers including Nikola Corp and Fisker have either gone public or are planning to list their shares through mergers with blank-check companies this year.

“Lordstown ... has a transformational product and business plan in what are two of the most valuable areas of focus and tremendous opportunity in the auto sector - electric vehicles and light duty trucks,” DiamondPeak Chief Executive David Hamamoto said on a conference call. “Lordstown has attracted a clear lane of customers in the commercial fleet segment of the market.”

Lordstown has been working on a new full-size electric pickup truck called Endurance and last year hired Rich Schmidt, a former director of manufacturing at Tesla Inc, as chief production officer.

The company said the truck is aimed at the U.S. commercial fleet market, with initial production expected in the second half of 2021. The Endurance will have an electric driving range of 250 miles and a price tag of $45,000 net of a federal tax credit, Lordstown CEO Steve Burns said on the call.

Lordstown expects to receive about $675 million of gross proceeds from the deal and will use the funds for the production of the new truck, which has secured $1.4 billion worth of pre-orders, the company said.

The deal includes investments by General Motors and institutional investors, including Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC, Wellington Management Company LLP, Federated Hermes Kaufmann Small Cap Fund, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, among others, Lordstown said.

Electric pickups look like they'll be big business with several brands -- both legacy and startup -- planning to offer them in the coming years. One of the latter is called Lordstown Motors, and it debuted its Endurance pickup back in June. What sets Lordstown apart from its competitors is the fact that it's exclusively targeting commercial fleets as customers.

That strategy seems to be working because the brand announced on Wednesday that it had received approximately 40,000 preorders for the Endurance. Now, that may not sound like much compared to the half a million preorders that Tesla claims it has for the Cybertruck, but because they're commercial fleet orders, they might be more likely actually to turn into sales.

Farmington Hills — Now that Lordstown Motors Corp. has the financial backing it needs, the electric vehicle startup is hoping to beat its competition to market by delivering its electric truck by next September.

Northeast Ohio-based Lordstown Motors and DiamondPeak Holdings Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, completed a merger that makes the EV startup a publicly traded company, effective Monday. The deal gives the truck maker the financing needed to start production next year of its electric Endurance truck.


Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns plans to deliver that truck as automakers Rivian Automotive Inc., Tesla Inc. and General Motors Co. plan to bring their own electric truck offerings to market around the same time. Yet Americans are still loving their big, gas-powered pickups and SUVs, with those sales leading multiple brands and providing support for the expensive electric plans automakers are trying to fulfill.
To stand out from the competition, Burns has pushed his truck into the commercial lane, gearing the $52,500 Endurance toward fleet customers from municipalities to utility companies.

"We don't see anybody in our lane," Burns said in an interview at company offices in Farmington Hills. "There is nobody with a full-size truck for workers priced in this range, and it is hard to get a lane to yourself in modern-day automotive. Nobody's playing in this lane right now and we plan to claim it, own it and lead it."

Lordstown Motors purchased GM's former Lordstown Assembly Complex near Youngstown, Ohio, last fall. Since then, the company has been working to get the financing to take over a more than 50-year-old auto plant and prepare it for the launch of an electric vehicle. The merger with DiamondPeak will provide $675 million of gross proceeds that will be used to fund production of the Endurance. GM invested $75 million in the startup. Lordstown Motors also received backing from institutional investors, including Fidelity Management & Research Co. LLC.

Businesses who add an electric Lordstown Endurance pickup to their fleet will be able to count on Camping World's network of retailers for service, the two companies announced. Camping World locations across the nation will be expanded to maintain and repair the trucks, and the partnership could grow in the coming years.

Camping World's 170 service centers will supplement the independently-owned shops that Lordstown plans to establish in America's high-density areas. These stores represent thousands of technicians and service bays, according to a jointly-released statement, and they'll gain the ability to fix mechanical issues as well as body damage to ensure Endurance operators can put their trucks back on the road as quickly as possible.

Spare parts will come from a separate network that Lordstown is currently building. Owners will also benefit from a 24/7 tech hotline, and from the Good Sam's Roadside Assistance Program that Camping World runs.

Looking ahead, Lordstown and Camping World plan to expand their partnership by building an electric RV on the Endurance's basic platform. Details remain few and far between, and it sounds like the project is at the embryonic stage of development. The two partners will also develop a lithium-ion battery pack capable of replacing the gasoline-powered generator found in many RVs and travel trailers currently on the market, and they want to put Good Sam charging stations at Camping World locations around the nation to ensure travelers stay juiced up.

Additional details about the electric RV will be released in early 2021. In the meantime, Lordstown — which recently went public— is planning to begin manufacturing the Endurance in a former General Motors factory located in Lordstown, Ohio, during the second half of next year. Pricing tentatively starts at $52,500.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) said on Tuesday it will award a multibillion-dollar, 10-year contract to Oshkosh Defense to manufacture a new generation of postal delivery vehicles.

Under the initial $482 million investment, Oshkosh Defense, a unit of Oshkosh Corp, will finalize the production design, testing and vehicle tooling necessary prior to vehicle production.

The contract, which could be worth more than $6 billion in total, allows for delivery of between 50,000 to 165,000 of the vehicles over 10 years that will be a mix of internal combustion-powered and battery-electric vehicles. Oshkosh had teamed up with Ford Motor Co. on its proposal based on a Transit van.

The current gas-guzzling USPS delivery vehicles are nearly 30 years old on average. An audit report last year said USPS spent $5,000 alone per delivery vehicle annually on maintenance costs.

Oshkosh shares rose about 6.1% on the news.

Shares of Workhorse Group, a losing bidder that sought to build electric only vehicles at the former GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, were briefly halted and lost almost half their value after the news.

Colliers Securities analyst Michael Shlisky said Workhorse's loss of the contract is "really bad news for recent Workhorse investors."

USPS, which began planning to replace the current fleet in 2015, said the new vehicles could be retrofitted later with "electric vehicle technologies."

The USPS fleet has more than 230,000 vehicles, including 190,000 that deliver mail.

New USPS vehicles will begin deliveries in late 2023 and include air conditioning and heating, improved ergonomics, and advanced vehicle safety technology including air bags and 360-degree cameras. They will be able to carry more cargo and better accommodate higher package volumes.

Last month, President Joe Biden vowed to replace the U.S. government’s fleet of roughly 650,000 vehicles with electric models. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the USPS contract decision.

Hindenburg Research, the firm that took aim at Nikola Corp. last year, is now turning its sights on electric pickup maker Lordstown Motors Corp.

"Lordstown is an electric vehicle SPAC with no revenue and no sellable product, which we believe has misled investors on both its demand and production capabilities," Hindenburg said in a report on Friday.

"Despite claims that Lordstown will be producing vehicles by September, a former employee explained how the company is experiencing delays and making 'drastic' design modifications, putting them an estimated 3-4 years away from production," Hindenburg said.

The truckmaker is one of a slew of electric-vehicle startups that have gone public through mergers with special purpose acquisition companies. A number have come under close scrutiny, including Velodyne Lidar Inc., whose founder left amid a fight with its board.

Hindenburg further said that despite claims that battery packs would be made in-house, it had been told by former employees that "the equipment is months away from arriving, let alone being put into a production environment." For now, the packs are being assembled by hand, the firm said.

The employees also said "that the company has completed none of its needed testing or validation, including cold weather testing, durability testing, and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards testing required by the NHTSA," according to Hindenburg.

Lordstown said in January it had received more than 100,000 non-binding production reservations from commercial fleets for its EV truck.

"Our conversations with former employees, business partners and an extensive document review show that the company's orders are largely fictitious and used as a prop to raise capital and confer legitimacy," Hindenburg said.

Steve Burns, CEO of the Lordstown, Ohio electric truck manufacturer, said in a text message to Bloomberg that "we always stated that pre-orders were non-binding. That is what pre-orders are."

While Burns denied the allegations made in the report, the short-seller’s missive set the stage for Lordstown having to use its March 17 earnings report, its first as a public company, to defend itself. Lordstown shares fell 17 percent to close at $14.78 Friday in New York.

Hindenburg said that a $735 million order touted by Lordstown was made by E Squared Energy, a Texas company that doesn’t yet operate a fleet.

The report also said that Lordstown, which bought a small-car plant closed in 2019 by General Motors, has used a consulting firm to help generate pre-orders for its electric pickups but that since the sales are non-binding, claims of future revenue will be difficult to convert to real cash flow.

Burns acknowledged that Lordstown hired consulting firm Climb2Glory and said it wasn’t done to create a false impression of sales, but to determine how many customers it could realistically get for its truck. Lordstown also hired the EY consulting firm to study potential sales volume, he said.

"Demand will not be our problem," Burns said. "We will have more demand than we can possibly build."

In response to the assertion made in the report that production is three to four years off, Burns said: "We are on track for betas this month and start of production in September. Any statement to the contrary is a lie."

Nikola fraud accusationLast September, the short-seller accused Nikola of fraud, leading to the resignation of its founder, Trevor Milton. Nikola had publicly rejected all accusations.

In February, however, Nikola disclosed that the company and Milton had made several statements that were partially or completely inaccurate, after an internal review.

Following Hindenburg's accusations, GM and Nikola in November announced a reworked agreement on a fuel cell partnership, allowing the automaker to back out of taking a proposed equity stake in the startup.

Lordstown has had a rough start for the year, but it’s still confident in its ability to take its first all-electric truck, Endurance, into mass production this September. The video below is meant to get investors feeling equally confident, too.
6 photos

Lordstown Motors officially introduced Endurance last summer and immediately started taking pre-orders for it. Billed as the toughest and most reliable pickup, Endurance aims to be the first-to-market electric pickup in the world.

Just last month, short-seller Hindenburg Research published a very damning report about how Lordstown CEO Steve Burns built the Endurance “mirage” on a heap of lies, non-binding Letters of Intent (LOIs) disguised as firm orders, and misleading information. Now under investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and conducting its own separate review, Lordstown maintains innocence.

It also maintains that the September production/delivery start date holds. To convince investors and future customers who already have reservations for the truck, Lordstown has posted the video below, showing the first two Beta Endurance trucks rolling off the production line. It was a “recognition event” dedicated to Ride Associates at the Ohio plant, the company says.

These two are the first of a planned 57-unit batch of Betas, after which the Endurance will go into mass production.

“It all started with a designer's pencil and today, we rolled our first Betas off the line,” Lordstown says. “We are proud of this significant accomplishment. […] We look forward to sharing more news and updates with our customers, partners and stakeholders as our important development process continues.”

On April 17, the Endurance Beta skateboard will be shown (and tested) at the 2021 SCORE International San Felipe 250 in San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico. According to the initial announcement, the skateboard will race in the single-loop 290-mile (467-km) race, deemed the perfect occasion to test the motor hub technology for Endurance.

Lordstown Motors is delivering a much-welcome dose of transparency in regards to what happened at the SCORE San Felipe 250 race on April 17, which saw the Endurance e-truck bow out after just 40 miles (64.3 km).
6 photos

Back in February, Lordstown announced with much fanfare that an off-road version of the Endurance electric pickup truck would attempt to complete the single-loop 290-mile (467-km) race in Baja California, Mexico, one of the toughest off-road races out there. The focus would not be on completing the race in a short time, since the Endurance would need recharging along the way. Instead, they would focus on testing the in-wheel hub motors and battery technology, and on using the data to improve the production version. That one is expected to start deliveries in September 2021.

The Endurance entered the race and bowed out of it after 40 miles (64.3 km). The initial response from Lordstown was that they had decided to retire, without offering an explanation, and that they were satisfied with how the truck had performed.

In a new update and video, both of which you will find at the bottom of the page, Lordstown CEO Steve Burns sets the record straight: no matter what you may have heard or read online, the Endurance did not encounter technical issues. It did not break down and it did not come apart. It performed excellently and would have continued on with the race, had it not been for an underestimate of battery drainage.

To put it simply, the Endurance was retired from the race because the difficult terrain (elevation and sand), the heat, and the big wheels drained the battery faster than they expected. “In our pre-race estimates, we assumed a 3X energy usage compared to normal road conditions at 200 ft. elevation. Following stage 1, however, our data showed consumption at 4 times the normal level,” Lordstown says.

Having completed stage 1 of the race and stopping to recharge, Lordstown realized the truck wouldn’t have enough battery to make it to the second charging station, at the end of stage 2 – meaning, another 65 miles (105 km) at a much higher elevation. So, to prevent causing disruptions on the racecourse in the mountains, the Endurance was sent back to the start line. On the way there, they got 10 more miles (16 km) of off-road testing.

While Lordstown would have liked to complete at least another stage of the race, there’s always next year. For the time being, they’re happy with the fact that all mechanicals on the truck met and even exceeded their expectations.

DETROIT -- Lordstown Motors Corp. said Monday that 2021 production of its Endurance truck, slated to begin in September, will be half of prior expectations and that the electric vehicle startup needs additional capital to execute its plans, sending shares down 8.3 percent in after-hours trading.

"We are still in a position to ramp the Endurance, but we do need additional capital to execute on our plans," CEO Steve Burns said in a statement. "We believe we have several opportunities to raise capital in various forms and have begun those discussions."

Lordstown said Endurance production this year will be limited and would be "at best 50 percent" of the company's prior expectations. It said it was still on track for the September launch of the truck, with pre-production vehicle builds slated for July.
The Ohio-based company blamed COVID-19 and industry-wide related issues that resulted in "significantly higher than expected" spending on parts, expedited shipping costs and third-party engineering resources.

Lordstown's shares slumped in March after Hindenburg Research disclosed it had taken a short position on the electric pickup truck maker's stock, saying the company had misled consumers and investors.

Short sellers bet the price of a stock will fall by borrowing shares in the hope of buying them back at a cheaper price and pocketing the difference.

Lordstown subsequently said the SEC had asked for information related to its merger with special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) DiamondPeak Holdings and preorders of its vehicles.