Meet the Lordstown Endurance, a new $52,500 electric work truck - Ars Technica

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• On June 25, Lordstown Motors revealed the Lordstown Endurance, a new battery electric truck.

  Lordstown Motors

• It's aimed squarely at the commercial fleet market and will cost $52,500 before tax credits.

  Lordstown Motors

• The front of the truck looks very 21st century.

  Lordstown Motors

• But otherwise the styling is very conventional. The aim was to not scare off fleet buyers.

  Lordstown Motors

• The next time you see one of these it will probably be painted up and covered in a company's logos

  Lordstown Motors

• Lordstown's designers work on the truck's shape.

  Lordstown Motors

• The Endurance will use four individual hub-mounted motors. The battery pack is contained within the truck's ladder frame.

  Lordstown Motors

• A sketch of the interior of the Endurance.

  Lordstown Motors

• The plan is to build 20,000 trucks a year at the former GM factory in Lordstown, Ohio.

  Lordstown Motors

• The cooling fins on the wheels are a clue to the fact it has hub motors.

  Lordstown Motors

Good news, everyone: the battery electric vehicle market is about to get more crowded. On Thursday, Lordstown Motors unveils the Lordstown Endurance, a new BEV truck aimed at the fleet market. The $52,500 truck goes into production next year in Lordstown, Ohio, at a former General Motors factory, and unlike forthcoming BEV pickups from Tesla and Rivian, this one is aimed squarely at the commercial and fleet market.

If news about a US-made electric pickup geared toward the work truck market sounds familiar to you, that's understandable. In 2018, we took a look at the Workhorse W-15, a carbon-fiber plug-in hybrid EV work truck that was designed in Ohio. But Workhorse ran into funding problems and decided to shelve the W-15. It also let go of its CEO, Steve Burns, who licensed some of the W-15 technology for a new project. That new project was Lordstown Motors, named for the town in Ohio where its factory is located. It's a factory that built Chevrolet Cruzes until it was closed last year in a widely criticized cost-cutting exercise by General Motors. (GM and LG Chem have also chosen Lordstown as the site of a new battery gigafactory.)

It looks like a normal truck

The first thing you notice about the Endurance is that it looks like it was styled to blend in on an American worksite, not to stand out on the surface of Mars. "We really tried to strike a balance on the looks, since we cater to fleets," Burns told me when we spoke by phone on Wednesday. "We thought, let's keep the vehicle so that at least it's a pickup truck. It has a bed and a cab and a hood, but let's make sure—because a lot of fleets are very proud that they are putting their names on the side of an electric vehicle—let's make sure folks can point to that and say, 'Oh, that's one of those electrics,'" he told me.

From head-on, the Endurance is pretty unmistakably 'one of those electrics' and also very of the moment, with narrow LED headlights and a smooth, aerodynamically efficient face. In profile, it's unmistakably a pickup truck, and a pretty conservatively styled one at that, compared to some of the more adventurous creases you'll find on midsize trucks from the big three.

The interior will also be less flashy than some of the trucks you used to see commuting to offices, back when commuting to offices was still a thing. "Again, we're catering to a certain customer—commercial fleet customers. So we don't have a leather seat option and things like that, so we could focus just on 'let's make this a functional work truck that gets the equivalent of 75 miles per gallon,'" Burns said.

Things are a little less conventional under the skin. By our reckoning, the Endurance will be the first mass-produced BEV to use individual hub motors for each wheel, instead of mounting electric motors on the chassis and connecting the wheels via driveshafts. Lordstown will license-build the hub motors, which were designed by Elaphe Propulsion Technologies. Total power output is planned at 447kW (600hp), with a continuous torque output of 2,711Nm (2,000lb-ft). Peak torque will be a hefty 5,965Nm (4,400lb-ft), and a claimed 7,500lb (3,400kg) towing capacity.

Using hub motors means there's also more space for packaging battery modules in the truck's chassis. Lordstown will also build its own battery packs, although it has still not announced who will supply it with lithium-ion cells. (GM and LG Chem are investing billions in a new battery gigafactory in Lordstown, Ohio but we don't believe that plant will supply Lordstown Motors.)

We also don't know the pack's capacity, but Lordstown says the truck will have a range of 250 miles (402km). It's designed to fast-charge—we believe at up to 150kW—and will also act as an on-site power source, providing 120V, 30A power for tools or lights.

20,000 trucks a year

Burns told me that although COVID-19 has slowed the production schedule somewhat, it hasn't really affected the order book. In fact, the company already has a full year of orders on its books, which equates to 20,000 trucks. That's a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of thousands of trucks built each year by Ford, GM, and Fiat Chrysler, but it's also 20,000 more BEV work trucks out there than there are now. Between that and the potential for revitalizing an industrial town going through hard times, we hope it pans out.

You can watch the live-streamed reveal below, and we'll update this article with new information if necessary. And if you haven't had enough truck content for the day, check back at 8pm ET for news about the new Ford F-150, which is being revealed this evening.

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Meet the Lordstown Endurance, a new $52,500 electric work truck - Ars Technica
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