Production issues have led to only 40 Endurance pickups being built so far.
It's looking like Lordstown Motors is in trouble yet again, as its partner Foxconn has only managed to build 40 Endurance pickups since the first truck rolled off the assembly line 6 months ago. This news comes courtesy of a Bloomberg report that outlines that the partnership between the two companies may not be as fruitful as many would have hoped.
It's no secret Lordstown motors has run into issue after issue these past few years. The company was in a sort of free fall last year when Foxconn showed up to save them from themselves. After the Taiwanese company known for making Apple, Android, and Sony products purchased the factory from and a stake in Lordstown Motors things finally appeared to be improving, especially after the truck was finally homologated for US sales.
In January, Lordstown asked Foxconn to suspend production of the truck due to the cost exceeding the targeted sales price of $65,000. Soon thereafter, production was finally halted, but only because issues were found in the production process related to propulsion, chassis, and infotainment. This, along with owners losing power while driving, prompted the company to initiate a recall for 19 of the trucks currently on the road.
Shockingly, the company also revealed on its March 6, Q4 2022 earnings call that unless it’s able to partner with a more experienced automaker it may have to abandon the Endurance pickup as it focuses on its future vehicle program with Foxconn and MIH consortium.
The issue is the Endurance pickup apparently costs significantly more for the company to produce than its selling point. The company doesn’t just want to jack up prices again because at that point the truck will make even less sense compared to others like the Ford F-150 Lightning and it will start to push into Rivian R1T territory.
This means the only path forward it can see is partnering with an experienced OEM that is looking for an electric pickup and doesn’t want to start one from the ground up. That way the influx of cash will allow plant retooling to bring the truck costs down and finally make it profitable. If that other automaker isn’t found, Lordstown says production will be paused indefinitely.
So what is Foxconn doing with all this? Why doesn’t the company invest more money to really get things going? Well, first of all, it appears that much of Foxconn’s initial investment, $100 million to be exact, is actually being put aside for this mysterious future model that Lordstown and Foxconn are making. This model will target a different segment in the commercial industry and Lordstown will be behind the design, engineering, development, testing, and homologation.
Additionally, Foxconn may have just bit off a bit more than it can chew with vehicle production. It's one thing to produce an iPhone, it's a lot more to produce a large vehicle with new technology in an industry you've never worked in before. Foxconn has a history of doing just that and then rolling back expectations. This could unfortunately be another example of this trend.
Lordstown looks like it will survive for now, but one thing it reiterated during its earnings call was that without a serious financial lifeline in the near future, things are only going to get more dire as time goes on.
Keyword: The Foxconn And Lordstown Partnership Is Not Going Well