From microcar fans to restorers of classic American muscle to the ’80s crowd preserving everyday family cars, it genuinely takes all kinds to save and enjoy automotive history. In the future, will we see collectors of modern EV oddities? I reckon we will, and they’ll be hunting for rides like this. A Lordstown Endurance electric pickup truck is up for sale on Facebook Marketplace, and if you ever wanted to own a piece of the EV startup bubble, this is as good a chance as any.
Through the EV boom of the late 2010s and early 2020s, Lordstown is one of the more notable stories of collapse. It lasted just five years from its founding to filing for Chapter 11, and while it has since emerged from bankruptcy, production hasn’t resumed. However, in that brief half-decade window, the company did make a handful of electric pickup trucks for customers, and they stand as monuments of an interesting moment in automotive history.
The story starts in 2018, when former Workhouse Group CEO Steve Burns decided to start a new electric vehicle company. One year later, it had purchased GM’s old Lordstown Assembly plant in Ohio and paid to license the Workhorse W-15 pickup truck as a starting point for its own design, with the deal seeing Workhorse gain a 15 percent equity stake in Lordstown. If you haven’t heard of the W-15, don’t worry, this 2017 prototype was fairly obscure. It was a range-extender hybrid like a BMW i3, with a three-cylinder engine, a 40 kWh net capacity battery pack, and dual electric motors. In a way, the W-15 predicted the future of electrified pickup trucks like the incoming Scout Terra and the Ram Ramcharger, but the vibe of the time was all-electric, so Lordstown set out re-engineering it to be a battery-only machine.
Clearly, the re-engineering was done in record time as the Lordstown Endurance electric truck made its public debut in 2020 and testing soon after, aligning nicely with Lordstown going public through every EV startup’s favorite method, the Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC for short. Basically, an acquisition company raised capital on the stock market, then reverse-merged with Lordstown as an easier way of going public. While SPACs were fast, cutting corners in going public often yielded questionable results.
Speaking of questionable results, it didn’t take long for snags in testing to appear, as one Endurance pickup prototype caught fire in January of 2021. In a way, that was a sign of things to come, as 2021 didn’t go smoothly for the firm. From accusations of inflated pre-order numbers to an SEC filing that revealed the cash on hand wouldn’t be enough for full-scale production, things were starting to look not-so-certain for the startup. Understandably, later in 2021, Lordstown sought to raise capital in any way possible, including selling the proverbial shirts off their backs. The plant the company was named after got sold to Foxconn, with the plan then being to contract Foxconn as a manufacturer of the Endurance pickup truck alongside the ill-fated Fisker Pear. However, even that wasn’t enough, so Lordstown asked Foxconn for an additional $170 million investment later that year. Unfortunately, the story goes that Foxconn didn’t follow through, and by mid-2023, Lordstown Motors had declared bankruptcy with only a small number of trucks making it into public hands. This is one of them.
Yes, here’s a 2023 Lordstown Endurance up for sale in Michigan on Facebook Marketplace, and as you’d expect, it’s basically showroom fresh. With a claimed 300 miles on the clock, its paint and trim gleam, its interior looks brand new, and it comes with both Level 1 and Level 2 charging equipment. What’s more, the Endurance is a rather interesting truck because it did things differently than every other electric truck on sale in America. Instead of a dual-motor setup with independent suspension at all four corners, the Lordstown Endurance featured hub motors that allowed for a solid rear axle riding on leaf springs.
Granted, while it was proof that the concept of hub motors could work, there’s some weirdness to the EPA numbers. Despite featuring a 109 kWh battery pack, this truck was only rated for 174 miles of range. That’s a weird one, considering the EPA rating also features figures of 48 MPGe and 48 kWh/100mi, figures that just don’t line up, considering MPGe is how many miles an EV can travel on 37.7 kWh of electricity. I wrote a whole piece on this right before Lordstown, well, went bust, but as a collector’s item, these EPA figures likely don’t matter as much.
On the one hand, $32,000 is a lot of money for a vehicle with a questionable parts support network outside of the things re-used from other vehicles. On the other, unlike certain other vehicles from startups that fizzled out early, the Endurance is type-approved, meaning you can buy one, register one, and drive one on American roads. It’s an incredibly rare truck that you can actually do stuff with. This would be a perfect machine for someone like Aging Wheels on YouTube, or another person who specializes in unusual EVs.
Top graphic credit: Facebook Marketplace seller/Lucasfilm
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Last summer I was in Iceland and saw one of these trucks. I was surprised to see my home state of Michigan on the manufacturer license plate. At the time I didn’t know what brand it was- there were no markings I could see but I did get some nice detailed photos. One of my favorite details is that the front place was probably just a photocopy of the back, as Michigan doesn’t require front plates.
I have always wondered what it was doing there, and now that I read about the company being bankrupt that makes it even more intriguing.
My understanding is that you get this serviced at your local Fisker Center of Broken Dreams
Buying a custom start up never in production in an EV format they will be gone in 10 years is not a vehicle that is a good investment
Best I can offer is a trade for a Fisker Ocean and my spot in the Elio production line
Call me crazy, but those high-voltage wires should not be touching a moving suspension part.
Right. They look like they’re zip-tied to the axle.
I was about to say the HV wires just touching the leafs seems like that is setup for a death waiting to happen. I thought the electric semi’s I have to deal with at work were unsafe hoopties but this thing looks so much worse haha.
You’re not crazy, I thought the same thing. How long until the insulation wears through and then you’ll have some glowing suspension pieces and a probable fire.
But… Hub motors ! Hahaha, those zip tied thick orange power cables represent crushing reality destroying powerpoint engineering. I can almost feel the depression that had to set upon the engineering team when they saw the first prototype.
There were a bunch of these at the Farmington Hills office a few months ago and now they are all gone.
I remember seeing those once driving past on the freeway. I never got a chance to go back and try to sneak through the lot, and they’re still on Google Maps in satellite view, so I wasn’t sure if they were gone or not, since I wasn’t sure if it was one of their facilities, or some other company that had them for testing, or even maybe just a place to store them.
Can’t wait to see this on Aging Wheels in a few months time when Robert will have to repair an unobtainium part that failed using old Coda parts and mahogany.
I’ve always liked the idea of hub motors despite the increase to unsprung weight, though I must admit I’ve yet to be able to wrap my head around HOW power and control data get FROM the battery pack and ECU TO the spinning/moving hub motors themselves. Of course, control data could be transmitted wirelessly, and I know that power can be moved over short distances wirelessly (such as cordless phone chargers) but I’m assuming this isn’t how hub motors receive their motivation/
It’s also not bad looking… a Storm Trooper WOULD buy one of these and stare at it lovingly in his driveway.
The power gets to the motors via the thick orange cables. Those cables have strict limits on the bend radius they can flex through, and the support required either side of a moving section of cable. I’ve done a bit of HV cable routing on prototype vehicles, and it’s a nightmare.
Even on a chassis mounted motor you have relative movement between the motor and the chassis because motors are mounted on flexible isolators, so every time it delivers or receives torque it’ll rock, plus it’ll bounce over rough roads. Nothing like the movement you get on suspension, but enough that it has to be designed for.
Control wires are much easier, they can be routed to the hubs just like the wheel speed sensor wires all cars have.
Yes, I’ve seen the fat orange high voltage cables in hybrids and EVs. I guess I understand now that you explain it that the ‘back’ or fixed to the chassis part of the motor doesn’t rotate, so power and control signals/data are attached to that (the fixed part of the motor) and not (of course/now) the spinning part.
What about tire pressure sensors? They’re inside the tire or hollow part of the wheel, right? And those are always spinning as the car moves. So, they’re transmitting their data (tire pressure) wirelessly to some receiver in the car, right? Does that mean that tire pressure sensors have batteries that have to be replaced occasionally (I know they’re a source of problems for car owners) or can their data be read w/o any battery in the sensor/transmitter, like RFID or something like that?
Tyre pressures sensors have batteries. I think they replace the batteries when they replace a tyre.
I appreciate the Stormtrooper top shot. Beautifully composed.
This validation will sustain me until at least next Wednesday, possibly straight through to Friday
The Dogs of Lordstown.
I lost a crap-load on Lordstown stock. The truck only managed to do about 15 miles on the Baja race that was supposed the elevate their notoriety. It did the opposite. Was the beginning of the end and the confirmation of an ill-managed company.
I just checked and the truck is available in Napa Auto Parts.
You’re welcome. 😉
It’s a good thing I don’t have fuck-it money because this is exactly the type of obscure weirdness that I can appreciate. Absolutely no one will be expecting you to roll up in this. You could be car show royalty with this.
If I won the lottery, I would fill a barn with this kind of obscureness.
Damnit brain, I will not sell my perfectly good Bolt and DD this
Show up to EV meets in 2040 in this towing a Fisker Ocean or Vinfast.
I’ll take one of each.
Man if this weren’t $30K I might have done it haha. I love an ill fated odd ball vehicle
Yeah, it’d be a great vehicle for around town, where the range isn’t a problem and the stakes are low if something goes wrong. But I’d only pay maybe half this price for a fun conversation piece that’s an around-town vehicle.
It’s practical! It can make Home Depot runs!
Yeah I agree with that. But like in a collection of completely off the wall stuff? This would be so cool in a few decades!
Seeing you can buy a F-150 Lightning for around $30k at this point, this would be a crazy way for someone to spend their cash.
Try like $10k, and only if I had the engineering background and willingness to MacGyver my own repairs when they are needed.
But hey, I see Fisker Oceans are currently hovering around $20k, which still seems nuts.
Lordstown Motors was always a scam lol
“Despite featuring a 109 kWh battery pack, this truck was only rated for 174 miles of range”
I suspect that’s a direct result of using hub motors. Hub motors are a lot less efficient compared to geared motors… particularly when you get moving from being stopped.
I was at the auction these sold at. Four of them all sold that day for 7 to 10k each.
I always wondered what Steve Burns really did after leaving Blues Clues. The cover story was he went off to college, the allegedly true story was he wanted to start a punk/hardcore band, but now I think I’ve pieced it all together.
“Let’s see, we’ve got a Canceled Contract from Foxconn….an Assembly Line…and an Eviction Notice. Can you solve it?”
I actually have seen him in Shakespearean stage productions haha. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that I did ask him to sign my Handy Dandy Notebook after the show which he happily obliged.
Time to sit down in my thinking chair
Seems like it should be a Youtuber vehicle to buy and report on.
I always liked the styling of the Endurance. Like the Rivian, it’s not trying to be overly truck-like or aggressive. It just looks like it wants to make quiet trips to soccer practice and Home Depot and I’m totally fine with that.
I always though they looked like a Chevy truck made up to look modern for the next Robocob flick or something.
And here I always thought it was a Silverado dressed up like the Stormtroopers from The Force Awakens.
Isn’t the frame and body on these an older GM design they bought the tooling for? Pretty sure the doors, cab and bed are GM.
From the front 3/4 view. The cab looks a lot like a 2014-2018 Silverado.