Lordstown Motors reveals Endurance all-electric pickup
Because well, why not, another fledgling EV company has produced some drawings and specifications of an all-electric pickup truck it is working on, joining the likes of Tesla, Rivian and others.
Lordstown Motors is an adjunct of the Workhorse Group firm, which first made news when it entered into an agreement to lease the inactive GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio. The new entity is developing an electric truck, and it is or is not being supported financially by General Motors, depending on how one reads the vague announcements made by the parties involved up to now.
Lordstown Motors has said that it has signed a deal with GM "regarding financing the purchase and initial start-up of the Lordstown Motors facility." The factory being currently defunct, and requiring a major refit to accommodate production of EVs (estimates of the cost of that range as high as $300 million USD), the statement implies some financial support from the automotive giant to get the plant to “initial start-up”.
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In any event, what we see here is a pretty preliminary series of sketches. As for the performance details provided by the company, they includes a targeted base price of $52,000, a range of between 200 and 260 miles (or between 322 and just under 420 km), towing capacity of 6,000 lb (2721 kg) and a top speed of 80 mph (just under 130 km/h). The truck will get 600 hp total output from the four in-wheel hub motors.
Inevitably one has to take these still-theoretical figures for the as-yet-non-existent Endurance and stack them up against those proposed recently by a certain Elon Musk for Tesla’s future Cybertruck. That EV is set to debut at $49,900 USD, tow up to 10,000 lb (4,536 kg), deliver a range of 300 miles (483 km) and work with a dual-motor all-wheel-drive system.
The other obvious comparison to be made is with EV startup Rivian, which for its part has already managed to secure significant financing and made deals with big players like Ford and Amazon (which alone has placed an order for 100,000 delivery vans from the company). The company is already at the stage of testing prototype versions of its battery-operated R1T pickup truck.
Just over a year ago Rivian was at the stage of revealing some preliminary sketches and performance numbers for its future pickup. We’ll have to wait to see if Workhorse Motors advances at the same pace.
