The Lordstown Endurance Electric Pickup May Ride Again
The Lordstown Endurance is living up to its name.
The founder of Lordstown Motors, Steve Burns, has made a $10 million offer to buy the assets of the stalled startup electric pickup company.
Ohio-based Lordstown filed for bankruptcy in June and sued major shareholder Foxconn, accusing it of breaches of contract that contributed to its demise. The company’s stock is listed under the RIDE ticker symbol.
Lordstown had sold its Lordstown, Ohio, factory to the Taiwanese electronics giant, which agreed to build the Endurance pickup for it as a contract manufacturer. Foxconn also planned to build electric vehicles at the facility on a platform of its own design for other automakers, including Fisker, but additional deals have not been finalized.
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“Foxconn simply used its variety of contractual arrangements with the Company as a tool to maliciously and in bad faith destroy Lordstown’s business—while leveraging resources gained through the partnership to advance its own business interests,” Lordstown said in a statement released at the time.
Burns started Lordstown in 2018 and took the company public through a SPAC merger in 2020. He served as its CEO until he resigned in 2021 and since then has sold all of his shares in the company, which netted him approximately $66 million, according to The Review.
The Endurance officially went on sale this year, but the $65,000 truck arrived with a disappointing efficiency rating equivalent to 48 mpg and a range of 174 miles per charge. Similar Ford F-150 Lightning models are rated at 68-70 mpg with ranges of 240-320 miles. The all-wheel-drive Endurance featured a novel in-wheel electric motor design with a total output of 440 hp and an 8,000-pound towing capacity. Despite issues with bringing it to market, it was a finalist for the 2023 North American Truck of The Year award that was won by the F-150 Lightning.
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The company’s stock is currently listed with a market capitalization of roughly $17.5 million. Burns has made the $10 million offer through an entity called LAS Capital.
WFMJ reports that the offer is being resisted by several former investors, including Foxconn, and is being looked at by the SEC, with a hearing on the approval of the sale scheduled for October 18.
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