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Lordstown livestream starting soon @LordstownMotors $WKHS
Jim Tressel the opening speaker!
Goodyear blimp is on location, one of their reps is speaking now to welcome everyone.
Endurance pickup is designed for commercial fleets. Will use goodyear tires! Goodyear's goal is to be the tire of choice for EVs.
Operating in 6.2 million square foot facility. Planned on giving tour but is showing video about plant now.
Using former GM plant that is 53 years old, Lordstown plans to retool it to make their vehicles.
Lordstown saving a ton of $ by using existing equipment vs. building a factory from the ground up.
Steve Burns, CEO of Lordstown Motors, just stepped up on stage to tell a little bit about Lordstown's story. Will plan on hiring talent from Youngstown state (where Tressel is president)
Lordstown chose this location because of the existing facility. They felt it still had life left and they can repurpose it. GM wanted to continue making cars, and Lordstown wants to do just that.
Today they are showing prototype, but will start full production next year. Goal is to be first USA produced electric pickup truck.
Selling mainly as a fleet vehicle, and feel they can beat others on cost.
Talking a lot about how they don't depend on robots too much -- seems like a small dig at Tesla, who got in trouble using too many robots in production.
Trying to build 75mpg (equivalent) in their electric truck! Typical trucks today get less than 20 mpg...
How they are achieving this: Looks like a pickup truck, but has only 4 moving parts, with hub motors.
Hub motor allows for a simpler design, and makes it more efficient as a result. (As Lordstown claims)
Hub Motors allow for even lower center of gravity as well - batter and motors all sit at wheel level.
Now praising everyone that has helped with creating the Endurance Truck.
Says they want to lead the next generation of vehicles in the midwest, and help electrify this area where majority of pickup trucks are sold.
Calling this area "Voltage Valley" as they bring electric vehicles to this area.
Focusing on sales in US first, will move to other countries if they succeed.
I find it odd they've got all of these gov officials here. Haven't seen anything like it at other EV startups. Is it because it's the Midwest? Opportunity for politicians to claim they're creating jobs?
Sec of Energy is speaking now, Mike Pence is coming up soon.
Lots of talk about this being an American company. "Built in America, by American workers, using American materials"
Here comes the truck!
VP was in the passenger side lol
Truck does look nice!
This is turning into a Trump/Pence campaign speech now.. talking about how they are bringing back manufacturing jobs, how they did a great job on Coronavirus response, etc. Has nothing to do with the truck. Not a fan of this @LordstownMotors
So this sounds like an initiative by the US and Lordstown to bring jobs back to this area after GM left. Not sure what stake the gov has in this company. I'm glad they went with electric though!
They are building batteries in house! We'll see how that goes... No small feat.
14,000 pre orders are in record.
Really odd juxtaposition with Pence speaking so positively about electric vehicles. Republican leaders typically fight against incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, but he's pumping this company a lot.
Livestream is over. Wow. Not what I expected at all. No specs or anything revealed, just showed truck exterior.
