The steady stream of EV makers looking to go public to raise funds got another player: Lordstown Motors, which will merge with DiamondPeak Holdings, a shell company, to make the shift.
The new public automaker, which will build electric pickup trucks aimed at commercial fleets, will be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol RIDE. The deal is expected to raise $1.6 billion for the new entity and close in the fourth quarter of this year.
The new company will be called Lordstown Motors Corp. It is just the latest EV company to make the jump to an IPO following Fisker Inc. and Nikola Corp., which are expected to raise more than $2 billion combined from their public offerings.
(Lordstown Motors charges into electric truck fray with Endurance.)
Lordstown expects to receive about $675 million of gross proceeds from the deal and will use the funds for the production of the new truck, which has secured $1.4 billion worth of pre-orders, Reuters reported.
The company is in the process of converting part of General Motors’ former plant in Lordstown, Ohio to begin production of the pickups. If it holds to its proposed schedule, the first trucks will get to customers during the first quarter of 2021, which would beat competitors like the General Motors, Ford, Rivian, Tesla and the aforementioned Nikola.
“Lordstown … has a transformational product and business plan in what are two of the most valuable areas of focus and tremendous opportunity in the auto sector – electric vehicles and light duty trucks,” DiamondPeak Chief Executive David Hamamoto said on a conference call, Reuters reported. “Lordstown has attracted a clear lane of customers in the commercial fleet segment of the market.”
(Trump’s new budge cuts loan program for Lordstown EV truck maker.)
Lordstown aims to sell the Endurance to fleets and the commercial market. It comes in at $52,500, before government tax credits, or about $45,000 after the $7,500 federal tax credit. It also uses four electric motors mounted on the hub of each wheel.
The new model will travel about 250 miles on a full charge, which averages out to about 75 mph, according to the company. Total power output is planned at 600 horsepower with a peak torque output of 4,400 pound-feet. It’s expected to tow 7,500 pounds.
“People are starting to believe in electric,” Lordstown CEO Steve Burns said during the recent roll out of the production model of the Endurance in June. “We’re going to beat everyone to market.”
The company can build 600,000 trucks a year, although production levels will be much lower to start. That said, Burns said the company has booked enough advanced sales for take up the first year of production. SERVPRO, a fire and water restoration company, plans to buy 1,200 trucks, and FirstEnergy, an electric utility company, plans to buy 250.
(GM sells Lordstown plant to Workhorse.)
Lordstown will be in a fight with Tesla, which is accelerating the production timeframe for its uniquely styled Cybertruck – which also has at least 250,000 reservations in hand, and others like Rivian and Nikola on the “underdog” front as well as the aforementioned GM, which plans to have its GMC Hummer and its eye-popping performance stats, and Ford’s electric F-Series all out in the market in the next 18 to 24 months.
While Lordstown Motors seems to have some credibility in the market and some orders from known companies Nikola seems to look like a scam.
Their CEO dropped out of a community college after one year and sold burglar alarms for part of the intervening time. His other ventures were touted as tech ventures but were in fact plain old gas storage businesses.
His IPO netted them a very high enterprise valuation yet they have never presented a working prototype of their product; a fuel cell truck that needs hydrogen. Inasmuch as hydrogen is nearly unavailable this presents an insurmountable obstacle to actual adoption by anyone.
IMO this is a scam to raise a lot of money in aIPO and then slowly go bust so as to avoid prosecution for fraud.
There are lots of questions about Nikola, no question, Mark, the folks who have gotten involved in the project, including former GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky, gives it some serious credibility. I cannot see Girsky signing on for a scam set to rip off investors. There seems to be some serious acceptance of the idea of using H2 for specific routes where setting up a refueling network is possible. Even Toyota has that idea in mind for its own heavy truck program. Skeptical, yes, but I think there may be something real here.
Paul A. Eisenstein
Publisher, TheDetroitBureau.com