VP Pence dubs Endurance a ‘new beginning’ for Lordstown

LORDSTOWN — Lordstown Motors Corp. CEO Steve Burns said though there’s a handful of all-electric pickup trucks headed to market in the near future, his startup’s first offering, the Endurance, will “beat every one of them to market.”

The hundreds of attendees invited to the truck’s official unveiling Thursday at Lordstown Motors’ Hallock Young Road plant watched video montages of designing and prototyping work that’s gone on behind the scenes for the past year, since Lordstown Motors purchased the former General Motors Lordstown Assembly Complex in May 2019.

Even Burns, following the event, acknowledged to reporters there were many in the Valley who thought the Endurance would never see the light of day.

But on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence stepped out of the Lordstown-made pickup's passenger side.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouilette appeared moments earlier, welcoming attendees to “Voltage Valley,” which Lordstown Motors has worked to rebrand, from the Valley’s previous “Rust Belt” moniker.

Pence’s appearance lent some tangibility to Lordstown Motors’ venture previously unseen in the Valley, said Tom Humphries, CEO of the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber.

“Now all the naysayers [who] say, ‘Oh this is not going to happen’ — when you get the vice president of the United States to drop in … you need that kind of presence and support.

“I think that’s a really great sign for the opportunity here.”

Pence on Thursday spoke briefly from the stump, highlighting the President Donald Trump administration’s successes in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and establishing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — which takes effect July 1 — as well as replenishing employment cratered by the COVID-19 pandemic and creating 3 million jobs last month.

He said he wants Lordstown Motors “to be part of the great American comeback” and reflected on the plant’s 53-year history which put out “millions” of vehicles like the Chevrolet Impala and Cavalier.

“Today is a new beginning for Lordstown and it’s a new day for leadership in electric vehicles in the United States,” Pence said.

GOING THE DISTANCE

After seeing the Endurance cruise by for the first time Thursday, Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill teased that his wife still won’t let him preorder one. It has a $52,500 price tag.

“I gotta work a little bit harder,” he said, laughing.

“We’re excited about them being able to come in and be the first ones out of the box,” Hill said.

He said Lordstown Motors has been installing suppliers for the new hub motor and battery pack production lines inside the 6.2-million-square-foot plant.

The startup is currently only using a small portion of that space, Burns has said.

Hill said he’s excited to see what other commercial ventures gravitate to Voltage Valley — “good stuff brings good stuff.”

State Sen. Michael Rulli of Salem, R-33rd, told reporters he wants an Endurance to make his regular trips to Columbus, with buddy state Sen. Sean O’Brien of Bazetta, D-32nd, in tow.

With about 172 miles between Youngstown and the capital, the trip would take about two-thirds of the Endurance’s total charge. It can range up to 250 miles before needing the plug, Burns has said — the gas equivalent of 75 miles to the gallon.

Sam Covelli, owner of Covelli Enterprises and vice chairman of the Western Reserve Port Authority, said he’s eager to see the Endurance’s sales potential.

“You don’t know where the potential of this could go — it could be huge and it would be great for our area,” he said.

“This could be something for the whole country. … You want it to sell. It could be a great seller and that’s what you’re hoping for.”

If Lordstown Motors meets its goals, the Endurance will begin production next summer and, by the following year, trucks with “Lordstown” emblazoned on their rears will start rolling off the line, Burns said Thursday. That’s if the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer an obstacle to safe work, he later added.

Initially, Burns wanted the Endurance on the market by the end of this year.

At the height of GM’s Chevrolet Cruze area, the Hallock Young Road plant put out 400,000 vehicles a year. Because the Endurance is much simpler to make — and has only four moving parts in the drivetrain: the wheels — Burns estimates Lordstown Motors can make 600,000 vehicles a year, provided the yet untested demand for electric pickups is there.

“Intuitively, we know a 75 mpg pickup truck will sell at our price point. We didn’t know if they would buy from a new [original equipment manufacturer] — you know, an unknown,” Burns told reporters Thursday, but added he thinks buyers in the current economy are.

Though early adopters who hadn’t even seen the vehicle have already reserved 14,000 units — enough to fill the Endurance’s first year of production, Burns said — the state legislature will have to put the Endurance through its paces, to ensure it hits the benchmarks as Burns claims.

“We want to make sure it passes all the safety tests,” O’Brien said, adding Duke Energy, which has pledged for 500 trucks, told him, “We’ve got to make sure it does everything they say it’s going to do.”

The official specifications of the Lordstown Motors Corp. Endurance

WHAT ELSE CAN IT DO?

Following the Thursday reveal, Burns was eager to talk about the technology that makes the Endurance stand out.

One reporter noted it looks nothing like Tesla’s strikingly angular Cybertruck, which was unveiled in November.

“Since we sell to fleet customers that are likely to put their name on the side of it … we didn’t want to get too radical,” Burns said. “We thought that might not be the image they wanted to convey to customers.

“We wanted it to be a pickup truck — but you can point to it and say, ‘That’s one of those electrics.’”

The Endurance ranges up to 250 miles on a single charge, Burns has said, and there are a couple ways to add more juice. A fast charge takes about 40 minutes. If completely empty, a full charge could take between four and eight hours, depending on the level of charge the driver wants.

The Endurance doesn’t have a single, multi-cylinder motor as in internal combustion vehicles. Each wheel has its own independently controlled “hub” motor, which will be manufactured inside the Hallock Young Road plant. Though many Endurance parts are lightweight, the hub motors are built tough so they can withstand potholes and rugged terrain without leaving the vehicle completely disabled.

Even if one motor is disabled, the three others can compensate, Burns has said.

The fact that each motor’s speed is controlled by software that takes the road into account means the Endurance can offer the traction and handling of a sports car, Burns said. The software also gives it an edge in rough terrain.

“If we’re in the mud next to a Ford F-150, we should come out first,” Burns said Thursday.

WHEN ARE THEY HIRING?

Burns said the initial wave of new Lordstown Motors Corp. employees will be hired about two months before production is expected to begin: 400 line workers; 300 engineers; and 100 additional workers each for the plant’s new hub motor and battery pack lines.

If necessary, the company intends to retrain traditional automotive workers to build an electric vehicle.

State Rep. Gil Blair of Niles, D-63rd, said the Endurance’s production and hiring goals are “good news.”

“We certainly hope we can get back some of the families we lost [when the Lordstown Assembly Complex was shuttered],” he said.

“We still have thousands of families that have left this area and are in Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and many of those folks would like to be back here and working,” Blair added. “We’re still working to create those bridges and hopefully we can do that.”

Though Burns and union leadership initially met months ago, communication have been quiet. The company’s United Auto Workers representative is no longer part of the union’s management and since then, the union has not reached out to Lordstown Motors, he said Thursday.

Despite that, Burns reiterated Lordstown Motors is not against organized labor.

“We want what our worker wants. If workers would like to unionize, we’ll make it work,” he said. “I need happy workers.”

This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 3:52 AM with the headline "VP Pence dubs Endurance a ‘new beginning’ for Lordstown."