Lordstown Motors: We're on Track to Launch Electric Pickup Next Fall

Lordstown Motors (RIDE +0.02%) said today that it has about 50,000 reservations from commercial fleets for its upcoming electric Endurance pickup truck, that it's currently testing prototypes and staffing up to begin production of the truck late next year, and that two Tesla (TSLA 0.01%) veterans have joined its leadership team. 

Because Lordstown just went public in late October, it won't begin regular quarterly earnings reports until early next year, when it reports its results for the fourth quarter of 2020. To keep investors informed until then, it released a business update on Monday intended to stand in for the kind of update it would have provided via an earnings report.

Lordstown CEO Steve Burns with a prototype Endurance. The company said it's on track to begin production next September. Image source: Lordstown Motors.

Here are the key points from Lordstown's update.

• Lots of interest in the Endurance. While those 50,000 reservations are nonbinding, they do represent significant interest. Lordstown said that those reservations are from commercial-fleet operators (the Endurance is designed for fleet use) and that the average order size is around 500 trucks. The company also noted that there has been significant additional interest in the truck from government agencies, which aren't able to place pre-orders. 
• The go-to-market plan is on schedule. Lordstown currently expects to begin deliveries of the truck in September, with full production ramping up throughout 2022. It's currently testing hand-built "alpha 2" prototypes, and expects to build 40 to 50 "beta" prototypes on its production line early next year. 
• The company is hiring. It currently has over 250 employees, plus another 150 or so contractors. It expects to have 500 employees by the end of 2020, and about 1,500 by the end of 2021. It's hiring across disciplines.
• Lordstown is opening new sites. The company will open a new research and development center near Detroit this week, and a service center in California later in November. In addition, it has begun construction of a battery-pack and motor production facility at its factory and headquarters in Lordstown, Ohio. 

Last but not least, Lordstown announced three new senior executives: Rich Schmidt, who was a senior production executive at Tesla, has become Lordstown's president; John Vo, who ran global manufacturing for Tesla, will now lead Lordstown's propulsion-engineering team; and Shane Brown, a manufacturing expert and veteran of Volkswagen and Kia Motors, is now Lordstown's chief production officer.