#LordstownMotors

Rivian wants to dazzle you with excessive range and dirt-flinging tank turns. Ford wants you to feel virtuous while behind the wheel of an F-150. General Motors wants to crush things beneath the wheels of the monstrous GMC Hummer EV.

Lordstown Motors’s electric pickup, on the other hand, doesn’t want to be everyone’s best friend. The fledgling automaker, owner of GM’s former Chevy Cruze plant in Northeast Ohio, unveiled its first product Thursday, beating Ford and GM to an electric pickup debut.

It’s the smallest player in the nascent electric pickup segment, but it wants to be among the first — if not the first — to field such a product. That would be Lordstown Motors Corp., the fledgling automaker that took ownership of General Motors’ sprawling assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio last November.

From that 6.2 million square foot facility, the company hopes to realize its dream of competing with Ford, GM, Rivian, and others with its Endurance pickup — a full-size EV powered by four in-wheel motors built on site. There’s not long to wait for a debut.

A fledgling electric vehicle company with a sprawling former General Motors plant in its possession will reveal its first model in late June.

That’s according to Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns, who said the debut of the Endurance, originally slated for the Detroit auto show, will take place online instead. A full-size pickup that shuns internal combustion, the Endurance will face still competition from the Likes of Ford, Rivian, and GM in the emerging segment, though Lordstown doesn’t plan to stop there.

Lordstown Motors is just one of the contenders vying for buyers in the yet unrealized electric pickup segment and, like the others, it isn’t immune (pardon the phrasing) from the coronavirus pandemic’s fallout.

After moving into a mothballed General Motors assembly plant in Northeast Ohio late last year, Lordstown Motors now says the virus has pushed back its production plans.

No, General Motors hasn’t snatched back its mothballed Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant and restarted production of the Chevrolet Cruze. Clearly, those angry letters from yours truly fell on deaf ears.

Instead, the plant’s new owner, Lordstown Motors, will reveal the model it hopes to build at the former GM site at this summer’s Detroit auto show. Before homegrown electric pickups can roll out of the plant, however, Lordstown first needs cash.

That’s where the feds come in.

From the Mustang Mach-E to the Cybertruck in a matter of days. What a week it’s been. While the verdict is still coming in on Tesla’s, um, interesting take on an electric pickup, an auto giant and an upstart automaker that just bought a big assembly plant are happy to offer an alternative.

Of course, neither General Motors nor Lordstown Motors have a physical, production-ready pickup to show you, but many would argue Tesla doesn’t, either. Yet both rival EV pickups are on the way, the companies claim. One’s already taking pre-orders.

That didn’t take long. With General Motors now in possession of a ratified four-year labor agreement, a plant the automaker closed down earlier this year, and one it had no intention of restoring to its past glory, is out of its hands.

Ohio’s Lordstown Assembly, which fell victim to dwindling passenger car sales (by the time of its closure, the facility was operating on one shift — down from three earlier in the Chevrolet Cruze’s life), has been sold to Lordstown Motors Corp., the automaker said Thursday.