MC&T Staff 
Electric vehicle startup Lordstown Motors has now surpassed 100,000 orders for its electric truck. The company is aiming to kick off production of its first product, the Endurance electric pickup truck, later this year. The truck will roll out of the former General Motors Lordstown Assembly complex in northeast Ohio, near Cleveland.
Lordstown Motors is attempting to enter the emerging electric truck market, one that is extremely nascent at this point, yet quickly becoming saturated with offerings like the GMC Hummer EV, Tesla Cybertruck, Rivian R1T, and the upcoming F-150 Electric. The company has differentiated itself by focusing on the commercial market, persuading utility companies, and other fleet heavy businesses to consider electric offerings over gas-powered products.
According to a press release, the 100,000 non-binding production reservations represent an average order size of nearly 600 vehicles per commercial fleet. It’s incredibly easy to put a deposit down for the upcoming electric truck, with the company accepting alternative forms of payment like Shop Pay and Google Pay, asking customers to simply type in the desired number of pre-orders they wish to make. But it doesn’t mean that all pre-orders will translate to sales.
“Receiving 100,000 pre-orders from commercial fleets for a truck like the Endurance is unprecedented in automotive history,” said Steve Burns, CEO of Lordstown Motors. “Adding in the interest we have from federal, state, municipal, and military fleets on top of that, I think you can see why we feel that we are about to revolutionize the pickup truck industry.”
If you’re in need of a refreshed, the Lordstown Motors Endurance is a full-size, all-electric pickup that has a range of 250 miles, boasts the equivalent of 600hp, and can tow up to 7,500lbs.
Lordstown is now building the first Beta Endurance vehicles and is on track to begin serialized production in September of this year. The initial Endurance trucks are priced at $45,000 after federal rebate and will arrive as crew cabs with medium bed lengths.
Following GM’s closure of Lordstown Assembly in 2019, the 6.2 million-square-foot plant was subsequently purchased by the EV startup with the goal of manufacturing 20,000 vehicles in its first year of production. The plant once produced more than 400,000 Chevrolet Cruze sedans a year.
And to think GM chose to partner with Nikola instead.
– By Michael Accardi
