Posted on 11/29/2022 7:51:28 AM PST by Red Badger
Image Credits: Lordstown Motors
Lordstown Motors has starting shipping its all-electric Endurance pickup trucks manufactured by Foxconn, a milestone that seemed impossible earlier this year.
Lordstown Motors, which has experienced investigations, executive upheaval and a shortage of capital, said Tuesday that its full-sized EV truck received full homologation with certification from both the EPA and CARB that clears the way for the company to start customer sales.
The first batch of 500 EV pickups, made at an Ohio factory now owned by Taiwanese hardware manufacturing company Foxconn, are on their way to fleet customers, according to the company. The announcement sent shares of Lordstown Motors stock up 3.79%.
Lordstown Motors has moved from one dramatic event to another in its short life as a company. Workhorse Group founder and former CEO Steve Burns started Lordstown Motors in 2018. The startup immediately gained attention for its deal with GM to buy the legacy automaker’s soon-to-be-shuttered factory in Lordstown, Ohio. GM invested $75 million into Lordstown.
The company became a political tool at times; the unveiling of its Endurance pickup truck geared towards contractors was largely used as a campaign stop for then-Vice President Mike Pence. Lordstown also sustained a series of setbacks, which seemed to ramp up after it became a publicly traded company through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.
In March 2021, Hindenburg Research, the short-seller firm whose report on Nikola Motor led to an SEC investigation and the resignation (and ultimately the indictment) of its founder, issued a report disputing Lordstown’s claims it had booked 100,000 pre-orders for its truck. The firm also alleged that Burns paid consultants for every truck pre-order as early as 2016 while he was leading Workhorse.
By summer 2021, Burns and CFO Julio Rodriguez had resigned, the company warned it was running low on capital and investors learned it was being investigated by the Department of Justice.
Foxconn, best known as the maker of Apple’s iPhone, came to the rescue in September 2021 and bought the Lordstown factory for $230 million. Foxconn also agreed to manufacture the pickup truck for Lordstown under a joint venture contract. Foxconn increased its investment in Lordstown Motors in November 2022 by buying $170 million in common stock and newly created preferred shares.
Foxconn holds all of Lordstown’s outstanding preferred stock and 18.3% of its common stock on a pro forma basis.
It appears that grille manufacturers have a serious production supply problem.
It is aero fronk lid now. For what they are, chassis for lightweight service haulers that never leave a zip code being shaped like a 1973 Checy Sports Van with zero need for aero over 50mps. None are going to work the west texas oil fields where all day AC is a reqirement so need for huge airflow. Or be mounted with a M2A as a technical and patrol sandbox highways, so what does it matter, it is bigger than normal golf cart to move the half dozen 5 gallon buckets of stuff, or it is bid out for the USPO contract where 100 miles per day is the contracted limit. That it has an 120V 20A UPS outlet for power is awsome for alot of applications. For 35 Grand it would be great. At 90 Grand it would need to be a tax play on personal income taxes.
A gasoline or desile powered AC that fits in the bed might end up being the number 1 upgrade for service trucks that are mobile offices and break rooms.
So EV car makers are looking for creative ways to make the grill disappear. Truck owners all made fun of Tesla's cyber truck having no grill-shaped front end (the idea being to have an angular shape to cut through the air better), which made the cyber truck look nothing like a truck. Thus other EV truck makers are trying to make their truck have a pickup-truck looking front end (which means a flat space on the front where the grill would be), but at the same time not be a real grill catching a bunch of air (and thus increasing drag, which reduces range).
One of my neighbors has a BIGFOOT type truck and so do his friends.
Weekends here look like a Monster Truck meet!..................
You just suck the joy right out of all my lame humor attempts.
ICE sound effects will be an option
“I’d miss cleaning bugs outta the grill. That’s the highlight of washing a vehicle.”
LOLOL...I thought it was cleaning black brake dust off wheel spokes.
My joy is getting them off the windshield.
My eyes, my eyes!
I knew I had seen that front end somewhere......................
I just got done elk hunting in Montana! This is the vehicle i need for 10,000 ft elevations 3 feet of snow and boulders at 35 below zero!
My wife and I like or EV car ... and we like our ICE pickup too. I wish the Dims would let us pick our cars with the free market instead of pushing mandates and tax incentives onto us. I think EV cars bring something to the table that some consumers can like more than ICE cars. But an EV pickup isn't ready for prime time yet unless you have a regularly defined large pickup daily chore that's always moving a load a short distance.
For example, if your work requires a fleet of trucks to move cargo or equipment daily, and always some of those trips are within a 50 mile radius, then I can see it being worth it for part of your fleet to be EV trucks (to save on gas and oil changes, and maybe have the extra power needed for the extra heavy loads as long as none of them are long distance hauls). But those are rare situations where only a few people would benefit from a truck like that.
EV cars are different, especially in a marriage where you need 2 cars anyway and one of them is an ICE pickup. For the kind of trips that an EV won't cut it, we have an ICE vehicle. That gives us the freedom to have an EV for the car to do most of our driving in to save on gas and do most of our driving for free (with our large solar system and battery storage for our house). It's not a 100% free driving and free power for our home kind of situation where we can go off-grid. But it moves the needle in our energy dependency enough so that I worry very little now about the Dims' stupid energy policies making it too expensive to live the kind of lifestyle we live as we head into retirement.
How many did you get?..................Is there a bag limit?.............
“Lordstown Motors begins shipping its Foxconn-made EV pickup trucks” Battery not included :-)
“Lordstown Motors begins shipping its Foxconn-made EV pickup trucks” Battery not included :-)
I actually owned one of those!!!
The last generation to know the feel of shifting gears and the sound of the engine. Drove a 49 Chevy truck for many years... regretfully I sold it.
Saw a car show on Direct TV over the weekend and one of the featured vehicles was this Corvair Pickup truck. They said only 821 were ever produced, so it was a rare find. I forget what it sold for after they restored it, but it was very expensive, like 20K IIRC...................
Homologation (Greek homologeo, ὁμολογέω, “to agree”) is the granting of approval by an official authority. This may be a court of law, a government department, or an academic or professional body, any of which would normally work from a set of rules or standards to determine whether such approval should be given. The word may be considered very roughly synonymous with accreditation, and in fact in French and Spanish[1] may be used with regard to academic degrees (see apostille). Certification is another possible synonym, while to homologate is the infinitive verb form.
In today’s marketplace, for instance, products must often be homologated by some public agency to assure that they meet standards for such things as safety and environmental impact. A court action may also sometimes be homologated by a judicial authority before it can proceed, and the term has a precise legal meaning in the judicial codes of some countries.
The equivalent process of testing and certification for conformance to technical standards is usually known as type approval in English-language jurisdictions.
Another usage pertains to the biological sciences, where it may describe the similarities used to assign organisms to the same family or taxon, similarities they have jointly inherited from a common ancestor.
One 400 lb cow elk meat for the winter (although I prefer boyardee insects and vegan foods) 1 per season took an hour with thousands of elk on winter ranges. $1100 nonresoliscense
$1100? WOW........................I hope it’s worth it!..............
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