With the dust still settling from yesterday’s unveiling of the 2021 Ford F-150, it can be easy to forget that one other pickup also made its global debut. But after years of speculation and rumors surrounding Lordstown Motors, the upstart company finally unveiled the production version of the Lordstown Endurance EV pickup which aims to make a splash in the rapidly developing EV truck segment.
Unlike the Tesla Cybertruck which boasts wild styling and a wedge like profile, the Endurance embraces a more traditional pickup shape, and it looks very similar to teaser sketches that the company released a short while ago. The design boasts plenty of core EV design traits, with the front fascia featuring a massive front shield that prominently displays the Lordstown Motors emblem. Instead of a huge opening for air flow, a small inlet takes its place below the logo. The headlights feature a two level design, and incorporate slick LED lighting to help the Endurance stand out at night.
A separate piece of black trim starts at the bottom of the doors, and snakes along this area before it kicks up at the rear fender where it eventually ends at the rear taillights. The lights themselves are also made out of LEDs, and stretch out from the sides all the way to the center of the tailgate. Below that are bumper mounted steps which are very similar to the units seen on the current generation Chevrolet Silverado.
LMC CEO Steve Burns was quick to point out that the Lordstown Endurance will have the best traction in the segment, and revealed that “it will handle like a sportscar.” While we doubt that many pickup buyers will put track days at the top of their priorities list, the massive amounts of traction could be handy for going through rough patches of terrain, or even towing heavy loads. Lordstown is using an in-wheel motor design for the truck, with each wheel housing an electric motor. But while the company chose to not reveal final acceleration, range and power figures, designers wanted to make sure the motors themselves drew plenty of attention, and have adorned each one with bronze colored contrast trim.
Lordstown also stopped short of showing any detailed glimpses of the interior, but like the exterior, we suspect that a more traditional design will be in play versus the radical sci-fi oriented designs that have come to define rivals like the fore-mentioned Cybertruck. This will not only help Lordstown Motors in terms of production costs, but also make the truck look more inviting for consumers. The truck featured in yesterday’s virtual reveal was a crew cab model, but the company confirmed that other configurations will also be available to help broaden the truck’s consumer base.
Pricing for the Lordstown Endurance will start at $52,000, but it will also apply for the $7,500 federal tax credit which would help knock pricing down to $44,500 before fees and extras are added to the equation. The company plans to build 20,000 trucks in 2021, but we will have to wait and see what happens to this plan especially as the country is still fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Lordstown Motors also revealed, that it will focus the bulk of these early models on commercial accounts, but revealed that there could still be an opportunity for traditional truck buyers to throw their hat in the ring too.
The Lordstown Endurance EV pickup does appear to have the goods to make a commendable name for itself in the EV pickup market, but whether it fully materializes as a formal production model or not will depend on the health of the company going forward. At the moment, the firm has 70 formal employees, as well as 100 contractors which are currently preparing the Lordstown Assembly plant (once owned by GM) for production of EV pickups.
The company originally envisioned delivering the first production units to customers by the end of the year, but the havoc brought about by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced the company to push that goal forward to January of 2021. In order to reach that goal, the company would have to double or even triple its workforce to make full use of the plant’s capabilities to reach that figure.
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