Sadly, electric truck maker Lordstown Motors’ bumpy and colorful ride appears to have come to an end. The company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and is suing business partner Foxconn for allegedly reneging on an investment deal.
Lordstown said it will try to sell its assets, and reduce its 243-person staff to a skeleton crew in order to complete existing orders for vehicles. The Washington Post reports that the company produced only 65 of its Endurance pickups since its 2018 founding.
Lordstown’s history began with a heartwarming tale of a shuttered factory in Lordstown, Ohio, which was retooled to build electric trucks. Sister company Workhorse was at the center of a tragedy in which a plan for the US Postal Service to electrify its delivery vehicles fell apart. In 2020, Lordstown rode the wave of EV-related SPAC startups and, along with most of those firms, saw its stock soar, then crash. In 2021, things turned dark as an activist short-seller raised questions about Lordstown’s order book. Then the company made a deal with Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn, which was supposed to buy most of Lordstown’s Ohio factory and get the long-delayed Endurance e-pickup on the road.
Now Lordstown has accused Foxconn of refusing to deliver all of the $170 million it had promised to invest. Foxconn has rejected those claims.
Lordstown founder and former CEO Stephen Burns has sold his entire stake in the company, according to a regulatory filing. Burns resigned from the role of CEO in 2021.
As far as we know, Lordstown’s woes do not affect the related EV-maker Workhorse, nor Foxconn’s production of Monarch electric tractors at the factory in the city of Lordstown.
Sources: Washington Post, Reuters
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