- Olga Kokorina
- Translated by Olga Apetenok
- Ru Fr Ar He
Lordstown. Difficult birth of an electric pick-up
Lordstown or Lordstown Motors Corporation is an American manufacturer of electric vehicles based in Lordstown, Ohio. The company is based in an assembly plant that was previously owned by General Motors. The company’s only creation today, an electric pickup with the self-explanatory name Endurance, has come a long and thorny path from a concept car to a production model. First introduced in 2017, it’s not only in 2020 that it acquired a sufficient marketable condition of a pre-series sample. In 2021, it had serious problems during the first test drive, was completely destroyed, and it was not until 2022 that it finally reached mass production. The difficult birth of the electric pickup is the key to a long, interesting and active life. We can only wish it good luck and tell you how it all started.
Obviously, Lordstown's strongest competitor is the Tesla Cybertruck electric pickup. Its price in the US starts at 39,900 dollars. The entry-level version with an electric motor will be able to travel more than 400 km on a single charge, while its maximum speed is limited to 177 km/h and the weight of the towed trailer is 3.4 tons. The initial price of the Lordstown Endurance is 52,500 dollars...
The vehicle is aptly named 'Endurance' as production began despite all the ups and downs, including the resignation of executives and change of ownership of the company in Ohio, in addition to being on the brink of bankruptcy. The first units will arrive soon. The company’s majority shareholder today is Taiwan-based Foxconn (an electronics maker and supplier to Apple), which completed the purchase of the Ohio-based company for 230 million dollars in May 2022. By 2024, in addition to the Endurance pickups, the giant will assemble the PEAR electric SUVs for Fisker.
Birth stages
The American startup Lordstown Motors is the heir to the Workhorse company, founded by Stephen Burns. Its main objective is to create a real functional pickup, but modern and electric in tune with the trends. It should be noted that this format is so dearly loved by the Americans that they still prefer it to all other cars, even popular SUVs. Workhorse showed the first sample of an electric pickup in 2017. And then the search for a production site began.
The founder of Workhorse created a new company, Lordstown, specifically to invest 20 million dollars to purchase a plant owned by General Motors in Ohio that assembled the Chevrolet Cruze. Interestingly, GM itself allocated the money to him: the original amount of the loan was 40 million dollars. While the plant was being retooled, the company decided to present the production-ready Lordstown Endurance pickup. But during the first test, in January 2021, the prototype of the pickup caught fire and was completely destroyed, while details of the fire were hidden until February.
Despite the ignition of the prototype, the project was not closed, and the pickup managed not only to pass all the necessary certification stages, but even crash tests, as reported on the website of Lordstown Motors. This means the road to the US market is open for the first batch of 500 vehicles. According to preliminary data, about 50 pickups will be delivered to customers by the end of 2022, and the remaining 450 units will be shipped in the first half of 2023. In the future, the manufacturer promises to increase production volumes, although they are held back by a delay in the supply of components.
Lordstown Endurance
The model is distinguished by drive wheels. That is, a small electric motor is built into each wheel, and in total this quartet produces about 600 hp, and the torque reaches 6,000 Nm. The advantages of this solution are the control of traction and a minimum of moving parts, the absence of transmission elements or the installation of differentials, as well as the more spacious engine compartment. But there is also a big disadvantage: they are large unsprung masses, and the vehicle makes you feel all the road flaws. By the way, the design of the wheels themselves with a false winding of electric motors is intended to emphasize the presence of the drive wheels.
The motors are powered by a block of traction batteries with a capacity of 70 kWh. This block is located under the cab. The driving range is ‘over 400 km’ and acceleration from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) occurs in 5.5 seconds. The maximum speed is limited to approximately 128 km/h, which is due to the design characteristics of the vehicle and its purpose. The pickup is based on a chassis and its suspension is simple: a double-lever suspension at the front and a spring suspension at the rear. It seems that the company has not yet decided on the mass of the towed trailer: in different sections of the company’s website we find the values of 2.7 and 3.4 tons. The vehicle completed all the crash tests with the result of “five stars”.
