Lordstown Motors declared bankruptcy in June 2023 after building somewhere between 56 and 80 Endurance trucks, delivering 37 to actual customers, and watching most of those get bought back and stripped of their titles. The Endurance was announced at $52,500 with 250 miles of range. It launched at $65,000 and managed 174. A YouTuber known as Aging Wheels tracked down one of the few remaining road-legal examples -- purchased from a former investor who received it as a bankruptcy consolation prize -- and has been driving it on public roads like a normal vehicle. It is not a normal vehicle. It is one of the only homologated production vehicles ever fitted with in-wheel hub motors. It has software bugs, a broken odometer, frequent warning lights, and a pedestrian alert sound that stops working and requires a 12-volt battery reset to return. It also may be the most historically interesting truck in America right now.
The Lordstown story is a window into how badly the early-2020s EV truck market misjudged itself. When Lordstown unveiled the Endurance in July 2020 -- with the then-Vice President of the United States appearing at the event -- production was promised before the end of that year, with first deliveries in January 2021. By the time trucks actually reached customers in late 2022, the Ford F-150 Lightning had already launched, the Rivian R1T was in buyers' driveways, and the commercial fleet market Lordstown was targeting had moved on. The Lightning Pro, aimed at the same buyers, started at a lower price even after Ford's later increases. Lordstown was competing not just on specs -- where it trailed on range, payload, and software maturity -- but on brand. When a fleet manager is shopping for work trucks, "small Ohio startup with hub motors" is not a persuasive pitch against Ford. The company went through three CEOs before the bankruptcy filing, which tells you something about how the internal disagreements about the path forward played out.
The Endurance uses four in-wheel hub motors from Slovenian manufacturer Alafi, making it and the Lightyear 1 the only homologated production vehicles to enter the market with this drivetrain. Each motor is liquid-cooled with an inboard inverter, and the combined output is 440 horsepower. The 4,900 lb-ft torque figure cited by Lordstown sounds extraordinary until you understand that most EVs quote motor torque before any gear reduction -- the Endurance has no gearbox, so those numbers are directly at the wheel, which is an apples-to-oranges comparison to most competitor specs. Real-world testing clocked 0-60 in 5.2 seconds against Lordstown's claimed 6.3. The 109 kWh battery DC charges at a flat 150 kW from 10% to 57%, then ramps down -- an unusual curve that put 10-to-80% at 37 minutes, competitive with the Lightning on time if not on total range delivered. Payload capacity is 1,050 pounds, the lowest of any truck sold in North America including the Ford Maverick. The software has no charging schedule, no efficiency display, no way to manually set the clock, and warning lights that appear and resolve themselves at random.
Bottom line: The Lordstown Endurance is a historical artifact that was briefly sold as a product. Its hub motor technology is genuinely interesting and its DC charge curve is better than you'd expect from a company that never got the chance to iterate. But the software is unfinished, the payload is embarrassing for a truck that wanted to compete with the Lightning Pro, and the company that built it no longer exists. Drive one if the opportunity arises. Buy one only if you're comfortable treating a 12-volt reset as routine maintenance and have no pressing need for a functional odometer.