Lordstown Motors has enough “mandatory orders” from customers to fund limited production of its electric pickup trucks by May 2022, company officials said Tuesday, including the resignation of the company’s CEO and CFO just one day after an executive shakeup. Reaching that goal will come at a cost. Angela Strand, Lordstown’s interim chief executive, and President Rich Schmidt commented during an automotive press event that the company was putting all its resources into endurance pickup trucks, meaning other projects, including electric entertainment vans, had been suspended. .
“We are currently focusing on endurance trucks,” a CNBC report said. “This is our next goal for the next three months to ensure that we hit our production target and stay within our budget and move forward to keep vehicles ready for the market.” The “first mass-produced all-in-one electronic RV” was supposed to be released this month, but due to financial woes, Lordstown has removed the release and mention of the van from its revised annual filing – the first change was mentioned earlier this month at WSJ.
Investors responded to the company’s comments with “our sufficient capital” and “binding orders” and put less weight on the “we are riding in the electric van” section. Shares of Lordstown Motors rose 11.34% to $10.31. Lordstown’s Q1 report, filed with the SEC last week, found a striking lack of capital that EV pickups could achieve on the way to production and supply. In the filing, the company warned investors that it had “considerable doubts about its ability to continue” the following year.
Investment research firm Hindenburg Research said the firm had misled consumers and investors about the endurance of the endurance, which the carmaker had faced in the past under investigation. But Strand called Tuesday a “new day” for the automaker-driven-SPAC. Schmidt revealed that the company has sufficient orders for limited production of endurance for 2021 and 2022, calling these orders “firm” and “mandatory.”
Work trucks will start at $55,000, he said. For comparison, another truck aimed at commercial customers, the Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, will start below $40,000. Schmidt said the company has $400 million in banks, but more is needed to increase its capacity to build more than 20,000 vehicles each year. Lordstown is actively looking for additional capital from GM, which owns a small portion of the start-up and other start-up investors. In a statement to Reuters, GM said: “We are comfortable with our current relationship with LMC but we are keen to hear such proposals for both parties.”
