Despite the Hindenburg Research report, the company said COVID-19 and industry-wide related issues are to blame.
Lordstown Motors said it might only be able to produce half of the Endurance electric pickup trucks it had planned to manufacture this year. Slated for September, the production would have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and industry-wide issues, such as the semiconductor shortage. To overcome that, the company will need more funding, according to its CEO. Yet, Lordstown Motors has had plenty of bad news before that.
On January 13, the first prototype to ever leave Lordstown Motors premises caught fire ten minutes after starting the test. Then, on March 12, Hindenburg Research wrote a report about the company calling it a “mirage” and accusing it of deceiving investors with fake reservation numbers. The company was under probe by SEC because of that, but the investigation results have not been released so far.
Steve Burns, Lordstown Motors’s CEO, released the bad news and said the Endurance will still start its production run in September. He also said that the company would produce pre-production vehicles in July. Its first beta prototypes were presented on March 31, and the company would have planned to build 57 of them.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Cy6rjvmSCJA
No Endurance beta prototypes have been photographed in the wild that we are aware of. The one that caught fire was either an alpha prototype or a mule since it did not have the same design presented by the Endurance. These sightings and the spy pictures that follow them are something that usually happens with any vehicle months or years before its production version is presented.
If Lordstown Motors manages to reach production in September after producing beta prototypes in March, it will be one of the fastest companies ever to develop a new vehicle. For a startup that admits it needs more money, that would be even more impressive.
Source:Automotive News
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