Photo: Lordstown Motors
There are so many competitors in the EV truck market right now that we would not be surprised if Tesla decides to kill the Cybertruck after all. But even so, Tesla is the poster child of the EV market and everyone wants to replicate its success story. It’s not easy, as Lordstown Motors has already found out, but recent investments from Foxconn mean the startup can continue with Endurance production.
There’s been a lot of drama for Lordstown Motors, proving not every EV startup finds it easy to take on Tesla. Financial hurdles compounded with CEO Steve Burns and CFO Julio Rodriguez's resignations after revealing the company needs more funding to keep Endurance alive. It’s nothing other EV startups haven’t already encountered, but in the case of Lordstown Motors, it meant the money stream has run dry.
The last time we’ve heard from Lordstown, the new CEO Dan Ninivaggi announced they would sell the factory to Foxconn in a push to maximize efficiency. Now it turns out this was not such a bad move after all, as Lordstown is back on track with Endurance manufacturing. According to Foxconn’s chairman Young Liu, the electric pickup will begin deliveries “in the second half of this year.”
Foxconn announced they will also build Fisker cars at the plant they bought from Lordstown Motors, so this is one of those “win-win” situations. Although Foxconn has various partnerships within the car industry, the Taiwanese company has also big ambitions to build its own electric vehicles. Foxconn revealed this at their annual tech day last October when they presented three EV prototypes.
The Lordstown Endurance's resurrection news was backed by a picture shared on Facebook on the official Lordstown account, featuring several white-painted Endurance trucks on the production line. “Thanks to our collaboration with Foxconn, our pre-production vehicles are rolling out of assembly and into diverse testing environments,” reads the Facebook post.
The story reads a little different in the Nikkei Asia report, which quotes Foxconn’s CEO as saying the trucks are made “in cooperation with Lordstown.” This suggests those trucks are pretty much Foxconn trucks. It would be interesting to watch how things will unfold from here. What is certain is that Lordstown’s (or Foxconn’s) trucks are not the holy grail that they promised to be anymore. The market is full to the brim with electric pickups now, and every one of them is better than the Endurance, at least on paper.
The last time we’ve heard from Lordstown, the new CEO Dan Ninivaggi announced they would sell the factory to Foxconn in a push to maximize efficiency. Now it turns out this was not such a bad move after all, as Lordstown is back on track with Endurance manufacturing. According to Foxconn’s chairman Young Liu, the electric pickup will begin deliveries “in the second half of this year.”
Foxconn announced they will also build Fisker cars at the plant they bought from Lordstown Motors, so this is one of those “win-win” situations. Although Foxconn has various partnerships within the car industry, the Taiwanese company has also big ambitions to build its own electric vehicles. Foxconn revealed this at their annual tech day last October when they presented three EV prototypes.
The Lordstown Endurance's resurrection news was backed by a picture shared on Facebook on the official Lordstown account, featuring several white-painted Endurance trucks on the production line. “Thanks to our collaboration with Foxconn, our pre-production vehicles are rolling out of assembly and into diverse testing environments,” reads the Facebook post.
The story reads a little different in the Nikkei Asia report, which quotes Foxconn’s CEO as saying the trucks are made “in cooperation with Lordstown.” This suggests those trucks are pretty much Foxconn trucks. It would be interesting to watch how things will unfold from here. What is certain is that Lordstown’s (or Foxconn’s) trucks are not the holy grail that they promised to be anymore. The market is full to the brim with electric pickups now, and every one of them is better than the Endurance, at least on paper.
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