Sam Krahn 
Earlier this year, Ohio-based Lordstown Motors announced their Endurance electric pickup truck was heading to the most grueling off-road race of them all: Baja. Now, the Ohio company has announced more details on the truck and revealed the actual vehicle taking part in the San Felipe 250 race on April 15th with a rad teaser video of the Lordstown Endurance racing truck. The goal of the entry isn’t to win, but to test and prove the durability of the truck’s signature in-wheel electric motor hubs over the desert terrain.
The San Felipe 250 is the first section of the SCORE World Desert Championship. It’s one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult Baja races, and covers 290 miles of varying desert terrain. In other words, expect bumps, sand, jumps and rocks for each and every one of those miles. It’s so grueling, in fact, that only around 50 percent of the 350 vehicles that take part finish each year.
And that’s why Lordstown isn’t taking a standard Endurance electric pickup truck. Their Baja racer, which you can see in the hype video below, is a fully stripped out racer, complete with long travel off-road suspension and massive wheels.
As you can see, it sits much higher than the regular Lordstown Endurance pickup, but the electric hub motors are interchangeable between the trucks. That’s because this is less a durability test for the truck’s chassis, as no standard production truck can really finish the race, and instead more of a test of the electric motor technology. The goal isn’t to finish first, as it’ll need a charging stop midway through, but to finish full stop. Impressive if only half of the cars that start cross the finish line at the end. Out of the upcoming crop of electric trucks, Lordstown is the only one doing in-wheel hub motors at all four corners, which are the copper elements you see in the wheels.
But even though its unique in that sense, its not the only electric truck going off-road racing to prove it can hang with internal combustion when the going gets rough. The GMC Hummer EV will spawn an Extreme E vehicle even more different to the production truck, while Rivian recently completed the Rebelle Rally in a relatively stock R1T. Keep your eyes peeled to see how the Lordstown Endurance gets on this weekend.
