UPDATED | Showing Endurance: Lordstown Motors Corp. opens its doors
LORDSTOWN — Lordstown Motors Corp. faces an uphill battle to regain public confidence in its all-electric Endurance pickup truck.
But members of the media on Tuesday saw that vehicle bounding over hills and splashing through mud pits — part of the second day of Lordstown Week, the automaker's weeklong investors event.
"We're looking forward to letting the truck do the talking today," said company spokesperson Ryan Hallett to the couple-dozen local, state and national reporters who pooled up for a tour of the company's 6.2-million-square-foot plant, presentations from department heads and ride-alongs in the Endurance.
Though Executive Chairwoman Angela Strand — named the interim head of Lordstown Motors following founding CEO Steve Burns departure earlier this month — reiterated the company's dedication to transparency in brief opening remarks, neither she nor other executives responsible for the company's operations took questions from reporters Tuesday.
"Right now, our focus is on the Endurance, which is why it was the centerpiece of today's visit," Hallett said in a follow-up email to Mahoning Matters.
In the seat
The Endurance itself didn't talk, rather it hummed insistently as a test driver pushed it from 0 mph to more than 40 mph in just a few seconds, forcing riders back into their seats. The once-empty parking lot where Hallock Young Road bends between the interstate and turnpike is now dotted with cones, part of a maneuvering course through which Endurance test models veered and weaved with precision — and perhaps inviting a bit of nausea for the average rider.
The day culminated in a breakneck run for the daring along a sculpted off-road course with hills and a muddy plunge into a small pond. Visitors strapped into a prototype six-seat buggy previously demonstrated for the military — equipped with the same Endurance chassis and hub motors, all caked in brown and green — before it tore up the turf and ripped up dust clouds.
Tyler Streit, the company's military liaison, said the vehicle was shown to the U.S. Army and that "everything's been well received so far."
WKBN-TV anchor Stan Boney didn't need much persuading to don a clear plastic poncho and climb into the buggy, but worried about how he'd look for his shift on the evening anchor desk. He told Mahoning Matters he was impressed by the model's durability.
"It would be interesting to see what it would do over 100,000 miles," or when put to use by the military in rugged settings, Boney said. "For my little short stint in it, it was impressive."
Under the hood
Golf cart tours of the 6.2-million-square-foot facility made several stops along the plant's production line for presentations from team members, with Disney World-esque narration offering technical background on the plant played during transition.
About 30 to 50 visitors booked in-person tours for each of the first four days of Lordstown Week, a spokesperson said. Friday's event is virtual. Mahoning Matters' pool on Tuesday was all media members — no investors or auto analysts.
Photographers weren't allowed to record several portions of the plant, including its hub motor and battery pack lines and its paint shop.
There are about 450 full-time workers at the Lordstown facility — not including contractors inside the Lordstown plant or regular workers at outposts in Michigan and California — and foot traffic was sparse in all but a few portions of the plant. At its height, the former GM operation employed thousands.
"Don't expect that the production line will be full," Strand said before the tour. "With 6.2 million square feet, you will see empty spaces. That is expected as we prepare to launch up to full production."
Stamping
The first stop was at one of the plant's newer stamping presses, left over from General Motors, where two workers fed in a piece of metal by hand. The first dies for those presses are expected to arrive in early September, when the process will become fully automated.
The main stamping lines can do 400 presses in an hour, said Michael Fabian, director of stamping operations. The company struck its first panel for the Endurance the morning of June 17.
The press shown to reporters Tuesday was fairly new and had only been used about 30,000 times, Fabian said. Older presses have been used more than 20 million times. Fabian estimated some of the newer presses have about 20 years of useful life left.
They would normally cost more than $30 million to install, but they came with the plant, which Lordstown Motors purchased from GM in November 2019 for $20 million.
"We had very little investment to have to get it up and running," Fabian said. "We've recommissioned everything. All the cranes have been safety-checked and everything. We're ready to turn the shop back on."
Ian Upton, Lordstown Motors' director of production control, told reporters many pieces of GM's leftover equipment are "worth far more" than what the company paid for the plant.
Body
About 35 workers are in the plant's body shop, which has pushed through 60 units to date, said George Syrianoudis, the plant's body shop director. Each body is expected to have nearly 4,500 welds and 150 linear feet of structural adhesive, he said, so "this is a strong, tough body. … It is well-built."
Behind Syrianoudis, robotics whirred, lifting Endurance frames.
One body featured the Flynn's Tire logo, along with its shamrock-green brand colors. A similarly branded door and back-end could be seen elsewhere on the manufacturing floor.
Hallett said it's possible the parts were intended as spec models, but he wasn't sure.
The Endurance will launch with a simple color palette, including "Electric White", "Grit Gray", "Nightshift Black" and "Titanium Silver". A premium color palette plays on the vehicle's marketing toward fleet buyers, with plans for "Forest Service Green", "Municipal Yellow", "Patrol Blue Metallic" and "Y'town Red."
Paint
Dusty Trail, director of paint operations, said the bodies' totally automated five-layer painting process protects against corrosion and also makes joints waterproof.
Workers manually "brush and touch up" sealant applications done by robots.
The shop's "three-wet" paint process allows three layers of paint to cure simultaneously, which keeps operating expenses down, he said.
Pockets inside the frame are filled with BETAFOAM to dampen road noise, Trail said.
General assembly
The facility's general assembly isn't completely automated, said John Wood, director of general assembly, who worked at GM Lordstown for 12 years and was one of the last remaining workers who closed the plant down in March 2019.
"We're choosing to spend our capital expenditures where it makes sense, to keep associates safe," he said. "But, for the most part, we're going to be pretty manual.
Workers are now starting to recommission the assembly line and expect "no issues" in the run up to late-September's production target, Wood added.
The facility's "skillet" assembly line is notable for being able to easily transition between different types of vehicles, he said.
"We are quickly able to convert from what was built here — the Cruze — into the cab that you see on the line right now," Wood said. "We are set up to be extremely flexible with the multiple products we can build at any time."
Interior
The Endurance's "skateboard" chassis can be used in future Lordstown Motors vehicles, said Aaron Smith, the company's vehicle architecture manager, who talked about the vehicle's interior on Tuesday.
He said its insides are similar enough to traditional vehicles to be intuitive for drivers, but has new bells and whistles "to let you know you're in something special."
The company's already reached major safety testing milestones, said Darren Post, the company's engineering VP, but it still has more testing and certification before the first models are delivered to customers.
"Our engineering team was actually moving quicker than any other company to this point. … We feel very pleased where we are," he said.
Hub motors
The floor where GM workers once built the interior of the Chevrolet Cruze has been completely cleared and its floor repainted a sterile gray-white, along with fresh safety markers. That's where the Endurance's 400,000 square-foot hub motor line will be installed.
But it was mostly empty Tuesday, save the demonstration area reporters saw. The company is awaiting certain parts currently in overseas transit, expected to arrive next month, when installation will begin, Hallett said in a later email to Mahoning Matters.
The hub motor line is expected to make 240,000 units a year, enough for 60,000 vehicles.
Those hub motors, one on each wheel, give the Endurance its power and are its only four moving parts. Each uses 110 kilowatts, or 440 kilowatts total — giving the Endurance 600 horsepower — and can get 2,100 pound-foot of torque, said Rajeev Lamba, director of hub motors, a 25-year automotive worker.
The company has licensed the hub motor technology from a Slovenian company, Elaphe. But Lamba is now working on Lordstown Motors' own design, which will be bigger and offer more torque, said Post, the company's engineering VP.
Engineers are shooting for a speed range of 20 mph to 80 mph, he said.
A regenerative braking system uses the motors' motion to return some charge back to the system, helping extend its proposed 250-mile range, engineers said.
When asked how hub motors would be serviced and how much they would cost to replace, Post said they "don't break" and won't need servicing, aside from brake pad replacements.
Batteries
Of all the stops on the plant tour, the plant's battery line was the most active, with several dozen workers milling about.
The line's automated carts with glowing blue neon lights deliver supplies and are able to sense obstructions, like workers, and move around them, said Dan Tasiemski, director of battery manufacturing.
Each of the battery cells — which are supplied by Samsung and LG — are inspected for defects then assembled into bandoliers. Seven of those bandoliers go into one battery module, for a total of 6,048 cells. Each pack weighs about 1,300 pounds.
Since those heavy packs are seated low on the truck, they help keep the truck's center of gravity low, which improves handling, one of the company's test drivers said.
Tasiemski said the batteries have an 8-year, 100,000-mile warranty. "That's when we expect it to start to degrade," he said.
President Rich Schmidt recently said retooling of the 55-year-old factory is about 85 percent complete. It's expected to finish "by September," Hallett later told Mahoning Matters. The first phase of the plant's new 400,000 square-foot battery pack line is complete. Another two lines are expected to be installed "in the coming months," he said.
Investor confidence still down
Shares of Lordstown Motors Corp. (NASDAQ: RIDE) closed in the green at $10.31 Tuesday, up 2.4 percent from Monday's closing price of $10.07. But the stock has been performing poorly for months, due to what executives categorized earlier this month as "negative press."
As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, the stock had continued its upward momentum, and was up to $11.32, about one point above Monday's closing price.
The stock took a hit Monday after a Wall Street Journal article drew attention to the more than $8 million in shares Lordstown Motors executives sold in February before the company's first-quarter earnings call, which it reported is outside usual market controls.
Post along with Schmidt and Director of Propulsion John Vo avoided a total of $4 million in losses by selling, according to the Journal.
The company addressed the sales in a June 14 release, claiming the "transactions were made for reasons unrelated to the performance of the company or viability of the Endurance." Each director retains "substantial" holdings in the company.
Several who took on new duties following the executive shake-up earlier this month received hundreds of thousands of new shares, regulatory filings show.
Shares fell more than 5 percent on the day, as the news overshadowed the first day of Lordstown Week.
During Tuesday's tour, the author of that article told Mahoning Matters its timing wasn't planned, and that the Journal's stringent internal controls can sometimes delay publication.
The Friday prior, the CEO of the company expected to provide a day-one service network for the Lordstown Endurance suggested that partnership is over.
Marcus Lemonis, CEO of Camping World and host of CNBC's reality TV show "The Profit" on Friday tweeted:
Lordstown Motors announced the partnership in mid-December. Lemonis at the time said he expected a plan to leverage Camping World's 170 service centers for the Endurance would be in place by June.
Hallett, Lordstown Motors' spokesperson, on Tuesday didn't directly confirm the partnership had ended or address a question about service for the Endurance, stating he was unable to offer more details. He instead pointed to the company's recent naming of John Whitcomb, a former GM employee, as its new vice president of global operations.
This story was originally published June 23, 2021 at 3:52 AM with the headline "UPDATED | Showing Endurance: Lordstown Motors Corp. opens its doors."