A year later, Lordstown, Valley look to embrace Endurance
LORDSTOWN — One year ago today, Old Glory draped the windshield of the final Chevrolet Cruze to roll off the Lordstown line.
Some of the 1,600 workers who still remained at General Motors' 53-year-old Lordstown plant on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 "laid down their tools for the last time," left their shoes by the door and took up a somber march to the corner of Ellsworth Bailey Road, where a community grieved.
On Thursday, March 5, 2020, the air inside the plant was stale and chilly. It was filled with a pervasive quiet, as thousands of manufacturing robots slept — but not for much longer, said Steve Burns.
On the eve of the one-year anniversary of GM Lordstown's last workday, its new owners, Burns and Lordstown Motors Corp., showed how they plan to stoke the forge once again.
Proof of life
More than 80 delegates from local, state and federal government and the private sector on Thursday got to see the electric vehicle maker's first offering in action.
Lordstown Motors invited public officials and the media to an open house at its 6.2-million-square-foot facility, the former General Motors Lordstown Assembly Complex.
During his remarks, Burns said the company must be singularly focused on putting out a great, first vehicle. For small automakers, penetrating the market space is a "David and Goliath" fight, he said.
The Endurance, a fully electric pickup truck targeted toward work-fleet buyers, represents the first step in electrifying the Mahoning Valley, he said.
"We don't want to be just a product. We want to be a movement," he said. "There needs to be a 'Tesla of the Midwest.' Nobody else is in our lane of making electric trucks for workers."
Though the truck is expected to be rugged and be able to last for 250 miles on a single charge, it also "handles like a sports car," he said. During his remarks, the company showed confidential footage of an Endurance test model being put through the paces, first calling for all cameras to stop recording.
The test truck was shown bouncing over slalomed bumps — with footage from its underside showing the suspension at work — tearing around a C-shaped corner and deliberately swerving along a closed track, showing off the vehicle's traction.
In another segment, it's shown climbing a 15-percent grade hill of what appeared to be loose dirt and mud. It's also shown hard-braking through mud, though the video did not show how long the truck took to come to a stop.
Though the test model included the Endurance's finished chassis, drivetrain and software, it was seen wearing a black-and-white-striped test body, as its standard body is still under development, Burns said.
Burns said the Endurance will be unveiled at the North American International Auto Show starting June 7 in Detroit, where "everyone will be able to see and touch it."
'Tough people making a tough truck'
The all-wheel-drive work truck can go from 0 to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds, Burns said Thursday. It can also tow up to 7,500 pounds, according to a specs sheet shown below.
As Burns has previously said, the name "Endurance" was chosen not only for the durability of the truck, but for the resilience of Lordstown autoworkers.
"It's tough people making a tough truck," he said.
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Burns said he expects the Endurance to be the safest, best-handling and most economic electric pickup on the market. He equated that economy to a Ford F-150 that can get 75 miles to the gallon yet "is also safer, has zero emissions and is fun to drive."
It's expected to cost $52,500, but if kept for eight years, it's like buying that F-150 for $14,000, Burns said.
Without axles, gears or differentials, the Endurance is as unreliant on moving parts as possible — just its four wheels. That means yearly maintenance is expected to cost 30 percent less than it would for a full-size, gas-powered truck, Lordstown Motors spokesperson Leigh Harmon said.
"I used to tell people it's simpler than the [Ford] Model T," which had about 500 moving parts, Burns said.
Tesla's electric vehicles have about 70.
Following Thursday's presentation, Mahoning County Commissioner Anthony Traficanti told Mahoning Matters he wants to know how the vehicle's hub-motor design — which puts an individual electric-powered motor on each of the four wheels and has yet to be mass-marketed for vehicles — stands up to corrosion or snow and ice, and whether potholes could completely disable the vehicle.
According to Harmon, the Endurance won't need maintenance in its first five years, outside of windshield wipers and tires — the latter of which can be changed normally, despite its wheel-based motors, Burns said.
If, for instance, one of the truck's two front hub motors fails, the other is programmed to turn off, allowing the car to be driven home on rear-wheel drive, Harmon said. The motor could then be replaced later, she said.
According to its spec sheet, the Endurance can be fully charged in about 10 hours.
As Lordstown Motors is targeting the fleet vehicle market — which largely operates locally — it's not planning to install charging stations out in the wild, Burns said. Rather, the automaker would offer chargers that can be installed in depots for overnight charging, or given to employees.
"California's always been known as the center of innovation. … Burns says innovation can now come from here, even though this community was never known for innovation," Traficanti said. "I think that's great. The way this campus is set up here, they can start doing the innovation from the Mahoning Valley."
Spinning up
At least a handful of the Lordstown line's robotic arms whirred on display during a media tour the company provided Thursday. The fact that the former GM plant was largely intact when handed off to Lordstown Motors allows the company to hit the market sooner, and at a lower price point, Burns said.
"We didn't just get a factory. This thing is still warm from when it made the Cruze," he said.
The company will, at first, only utilize about a third of the 6.2-million-square-foot facility.
Major parts of the plant's chassis line — which also won't be needed initially — and stamping line were newly installed within the last six years, executives said.
"GM did a very good job shutting down the equipment, so we're at an advantage in starting it back up," said Ronald Trautzsch, Lordstown Motors' director of stamping and body assembly. "Equipment like this doesn't like to be off for a length of time."
Inspectors spent this week re-certifying much of the long-dormant heavy equipment, he said. Next week, Lordstown Motors technicians will start slowly waking it up.
Burns said the plant boasts more stamping presses than Tesla.
Though production will start off small, with about 400 initial line workers, the goal is to eventually pump out more than 420,000 vehicles a year. "We intend to fill this plant," Burns said.
Some of the remaining square footage could house ancillary partners like suppliers, which would cut down on logistics costs and inventory, executives said Thursday.
Ian Upton, Lordstown Motors' director of production control, said the space could also be held for later expansion.
"As a smaller company, we have the ability to make decisions on the fly, and we don't have this huge corporate bureaucracy we have to deal with from an approval standpoint," he said.
Lordstown Motors expects to spend about $100 million retooling the facility to make the Endurance, which includes two new manufacturing lines for the Endurance's hub motors and battery packs, Burns said.
Though a joint venture between GM and South Korean chemical company LG Chem would put a new plant for electric vehicle battery cells right next door to Lordstown Motors, its products won't be compatible with the Endurance, Burns revealed Thursday.
GM executives presenting a separate public meeting on that plant Thursday in Lordstown confirmed the batteries would be for GM vehicles only.
"By the time it is up and running, if GM has spare capacity, we can make this work," Burns said, explaining that it makes more sense for automakers to build the packs that hold battery cells, rather than the cells themselves, to be more adaptable.
Burns said the company has been dealing with all of the industry's major cell-makers and intends to announce its provider within the month.
Back in the saddle
Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill told Mahoning Matters he hopes Lordstown Motors can raise the previously reported $300 million in capital it needs to get production off the ground.
When asked about the company's capital campaign during a question-and-answer session, Burns said the company is "on-track for what we announced we're going to do and when."
Production on the Endurance is expected to begin late this year. Hiring for that production work could begin in July, Burns said.
About 50 people are already in-place at the facility, including former Tesla, Ford, Volkswagen and Chrysler executives, as well as the former GM Lordstown HR manager, who brings a "Rolodex" of former worker contacts.
"First and foremost, the people we're going to look at first are … the people who used to work here in production and still live here," Burns said.
Lordstown Motors recently had its first meeting with United Auto Workers representatives, brokered by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, D-Ohio, Burns said.
Though U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, last month claimed production wages could reach as much as $50,000 a year, Burns didn't offer any confirmation Thursday, instead assuring wages would be "competitive" to other auto plants across the country.
However, there is currently no plan for the company to offer pensions, he said.
"If our workforce decides to unionize, that's fine with us," Burns said. "We are here to treat our employees great either way."
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 3:52 AM with the headline "A year later, Lordstown, Valley look to embrace Endurance."