The Lordstown Endurance doesn't have what it takes.
The ascension of Hightower to CEO—a veteran executive engineer of Ford, GM, and BMW, and the first African-American automaking chief in more than a century—at least put an experienced automaker in charge.
Today, Lordstown’s footprint is a frigid hotel parking lot in Ann Arbor, where I hop aboard a pre-production Endurance. Hightower, to his credit, shows up to field questions about the company, whose long march to production has lately been dogged by supply-chain snafus. When Pence touted the company, he mentioned a promising stream of 14,000 pre-orders. But those customers turned out to be a mirage. After denying accusations from, Lordstown admitted it actually had zero binding orders, and fired its CEO and CFO under the glare of an SEC investigation. Other company executives came under fire and resigned after selling off vast quantities of company stock just as news was breaking over an Endurance prototype fire in 2021.
The next head-scratcher: The Endurance needs four in-wheel motors like I need an F1 car to carry my family. It’s a technology that’s never been attempted in a production EV. Maybe you’d try it in a Rivian-style, high-performance or off-road truck. But the Endurance isn’t a showroom truck at all. It’s a utilitarian tool, designed to carry workers and their gear, at low speeds and cost.
The Ford Lightning Pro alone should give Lordstown a slap of reality. The Lightning Pro starts from $39,974. The Lordstown is no-name and bare-bones in comparison, yet somehow costs $25,000 more. That already seems a non-starter for the penny-pinching types that assemble and operate truck fleets.