Lordstown Motors was born out of a deal with GM which involved taking over the factory the Detroit based automotive company had in Lordstown. It had plans of bringing an electric pickup truck called the Lordstown Endurance which was supposed to go into production later in the year, but all these plans have seemingly come up a cropper as its CEO and CFO have decided to leave the company. The problem was that the Lordstown factory needed to be fully retooled which is why both the timeline and the entire effort was herculean. It was planning on bringing its first passenger vehicle to life with in-wheel hub motors which fundamentally is an untested technology for pick-up trucks. Like most electric car startups Lordstown went public through a SPAC deal and its valuation soared to $4 billion. It even managed to secure 100,000 orders for its Endurance pickup truck.
The electric pickup was said to use unproven technology
But the wheels started to come off the operation as it was exposed that some of the ordered were exaggerated and the first prototype had caught fire. Since then the company had been under increased scrutiny with the pressure to deliver rising. While all this happened, the chances of the Lordstown Endurance were dwindling.
Now its CEO Steve Burns and CFO Julio Rodriquez have resigned from the company. The company has put a spin on this news as well calling it a transition from an R&D phase to commercialisation.
"Lordstown Motors Corp a leader in electric light-duty trucks focused on the commercial fleet market, today announced several changes to its executive management team as the Company begins to transition from the R&D and early production phase to the commercial production phase of its business," said the company in a statement.
The issue with such a statement is the fact that Steve Burns was the man responsible for the formation of the company as he did deal with GM and merged it with a spin-off of Workhorse, his other company that enabled it to acquire the GM factory. Without him manning the wheels, it is hard to see them scale.
