Meet the Lordstown Endurance, a new $ 52,500 electric work truck

Good news for everyone: the market for battery-powered electric vehicles is about to fill up. On Thursday, Lordstown Motors presents the Lordstown Endurance, a new BEV truck aimed at the fleet market. The $ 52,500 truck will go into production next year in Lordstown, Ohio, at a former General Motors factory, and unlike Tesla and Rivian’s upcoming BEV trucks, this one is aimed directly at the commercial and fleet market.

If the news about a US-made electric truck geared toward the work truck market sounds familiar, that’s understandable. In 2018, we took a look at the Workhorse W-15, a plug-in hybrid EV carbon fiber work truck that was designed in Ohio. But Workhorse struggled with funding and decided to sideline the W-15. He also released his CEO, Steve Burns, who authorized some of the W-15 technology for a new project. That new project was Lordstown Motors, named after the Ohio city where its factory is located. It’s a factory that built Chevrolet Cruises until it closed last year in a cost-cutting exercise widely criticized by General Motors. (GM and LG Chem have also chosen Lordstown as the site of a new factory battery.)

It looks like a normal truck

The first thing you notice about the Endurance is that it looks like it was designed to fit into an American job site, not to stand out on the surface of Mars. “We really try to strike a balance in appearance as we serve fleets,” Burns told me when we spoke on the phone Wednesday. “We thought, let’s keep the vehicle to be at least a pickup truck. It has a bed, a cabin, and a hood, but let’s be sure, because many fleets are very proud to put their names aside.” of an electric vehicle, let’s make sure people can point to that and say, ‘Oh, that’s one of those electrics,’ “he said.

From the front, the Endurance is, without a doubt, “ one of those electrical systems ” and also very current, with narrow LED headlights and a smooth and aerodynamically efficient face. In profile, it’s undoubtedly a pickup, and a very conservative one, compared to some of the more adventurous wrinkles you’ll find in the big three’s mid-size pickups.

The interior will also be less eye-catching than some of the trucks I used to see going to offices, when traveling to offices was still one thing. “Once again, we are serving a certain customer: commercial fleet customers. So we don’t have a leather seat option and things like that, so we could just focus on ‘let’s make this a functional work truck that gets the equivalent 75 miles per gallon, ‘”Burns said.

Things are a little less conventional under the skin. Based on our calculation, the Endurance will be the first mass-produced BEV to use individual hub motors for each wheel, rather than mounting electric motors to the chassis and connecting the wheels via the drive axles. Lordstown will license to build the hub motors, which were designed by Elaphe Propulsion Technologies. Total output power is expected to be 447kW (600 hp), with a continuous torque output of 2,711Nm (2,000 lb-ft). The maximum torque will be 5,965 Nm (4,400 lb-ft) and a towing capacity of 7,500 lb (3,400 kg).

The use of hub motors means that there is also more room to pack battery modules into the truck’s chassis. Lordstown will also build its own battery packs, although it has not yet announced who will supply it with lithium-ion cells. (GM and LG Chem are investing billions in a new factory battery in Lordstown, Ohio, but we don’t think the plant will supply Lordstown Motors.)

We also don’t know the capacity of the package, but Lordstown says the truck will have a range of 250 miles (402 km). It is designed for fast charging, we believe it can reach up to 150kW, and will also act as an on-site power source, providing 120V, 30A of power for tools or lights.

20,000 trucks a year

Burns told me that although COVID-19 has slightly delayed the production schedule, it has not actually affected the order book. In fact, the company already has a full year of orders on its books, equivalent to 20,000 trucks. That’s a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of thousands of trucks built each year by Ford, GM, and Fiat Chrysler, but there are also 20,000 more BEV work trucks than there are now. Between that and the potential to revitalize an industrial city that is going through difficult times, we hope it works.

You can watch the live streamed reveal below, and we’ll update this article with new information if needed. And if you haven’t had enough truck content for the day, check back at 8 p.m. ET for news on the new Ford F-150, to be revealed tonight.

Lordstown Motors listing image