Photo: LMC
With 197 likes on Facebook and 223 people following the Facebook page, Lordstown Motors isn’t exactly a promising rival to Rivian’s electric truck business. But as it happens, General Motors sold the Lordstown factory to Lordstown Motors with the hope of bringing new jobs to the Mahoning Valley in Ohio.
State senator Sean J. O’Brien is optimistic about the latest developments, calling the news “encouraging. There is a lot of potential for the Lordstown Motors project, and this represents an important step in the development of an all-electric truck fleet in our community,” he said. Steve Burns, the chief executive officer of the startup, has added that he’s “committed to the people of Lordstown.”
Endurance is the name of the e-truck in the photo gallery, a full-sizer with a futuristic exterior design that’s expected to start production in late-2020. Developed exclusively for fleets, the Endurance will be manufactured by “experienced workers who helped produce millions of vehicles in this very plant.”
Fully equipped, the 6.2-million-square-foot production plant used to be the home of the Chevrolet Cruze. General Motors pulled the plug on the Cruze over dwindling sales and the increasing demand for crossovers and SUVs, and to date, more than 16 million vehicles have been produced in Lordstown, Ohio.
The problem, however, is that LMC is the offshoot of another EV startup. Steve Burns used to be the chief exec of Workhorse, a company that has sold e-vans and it’s currently competing for the contract to supply the United States Postal services with another type of e-van suited to this line of work. Workhorse had plenty of financial trouble in the past and more recently, selling its drone business and receiving a $35 million loan from a hedge fund to stay afloat.
On paper, an EV manufacturing hub sounds like a great idea if implemented properly. But given these circumstances, it’ll be hard for Lordstown Motors Corp. to find the hundreds of millions of dollars to put the Endurance into production and to find buyers for it. President Donald Trump tweeted about Workhorse and the Lordstown facility in May, but nevertheless, nobody knows what the future holds.
Endurance is the name of the e-truck in the photo gallery, a full-sizer with a futuristic exterior design that’s expected to start production in late-2020. Developed exclusively for fleets, the Endurance will be manufactured by “experienced workers who helped produce millions of vehicles in this very plant.”
Fully equipped, the 6.2-million-square-foot production plant used to be the home of the Chevrolet Cruze. General Motors pulled the plug on the Cruze over dwindling sales and the increasing demand for crossovers and SUVs, and to date, more than 16 million vehicles have been produced in Lordstown, Ohio.
The problem, however, is that LMC is the offshoot of another EV startup. Steve Burns used to be the chief exec of Workhorse, a company that has sold e-vans and it’s currently competing for the contract to supply the United States Postal services with another type of e-van suited to this line of work. Workhorse had plenty of financial trouble in the past and more recently, selling its drone business and receiving a $35 million loan from a hedge fund to stay afloat.
On paper, an EV manufacturing hub sounds like a great idea if implemented properly. But given these circumstances, it’ll be hard for Lordstown Motors Corp. to find the hundreds of millions of dollars to put the Endurance into production and to find buyers for it. President Donald Trump tweeted about Workhorse and the Lordstown facility in May, but nevertheless, nobody knows what the future holds.
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