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The ousted founding father of belly-up EV inauguration Lordstown Motors has launched a young company call in LandX Motors , that conspicuously displays the same galvanizing pickup hand truck he once promise would beat Tesla , Ford and General Motors to market .
Steve Burns , a self - described “ serial entrepreneur , ” bought most of the stay asset of his former startup late last year as part of the Lordstown ’s Chapter 11 failure proceedings , let in a orotund lump of its electric pickup truck . Ona new websitefor LandX Motors , he enounce this company will chart “ the future of mobility , ” and claims he will build a whole card of vehicles on the platform that underpin what used to be called the Endurance . While LandX Motors does n’t explicitly refer to the trucks as the Endurance , a video recording on the web site show EV trucks that have the Lordstown badge .
A person familiar with the fellowship ’s design told TechCrunch that it ’s not so much about the Endurance truck , but the underlie political platform , software and engineering behind it . Still , with the former Lordstown motortruck playing a starring role on company ’s website and video , it ’s unclear just how modernize this plan is .
What ’s not made clear on the site is how Burns plans to crock up some of the enceinte problems that Lordstown Motors never solved . Crucially , Lordstown Motors executives said in the months before file for bankruptcy auspices that the price to build the Endurance far exceeded the $ 60,000 retail cost . The company also does n’t say where , or how , it plans to make the truck . A LandX Motors spokesperson responded to an electronic mail , but did n’t provide any further info and declined to answer questions .
This is n’t the first time that Burns has started a unexampled electric vehicle fellowship with ties to an old one . He founded Lordstown Motors in 2019 after leaving a different struggling EV startup , Workhorse . He hit a mess with that company to certify the designs for a pickup hand truck project that became the Endurance .
He then purchase a shuttered GM factory in Lordstown , Ohio , and take Lordstown Motors public in a merger with a peculiar design acquisition company in 2020 .
By early 2021 , Lordstown Motors was under federal investigating for misleading investors during the amalgamation process about how many orders it had secured for the Endurance . Burns and then - primary fiscal officer Julio Rodriguez leave office after the party ’s own internal investigation mold that they had , in fact , mademisleading statements .
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The startup shinny and ultimately sold the mill to iPhone God Almighty Foxconn . The Taiwanese electronics giant bulge building Endurance truck in late 2022 , but they were quickly call up , and the two companieshad a shine out . Lordstown filed for failure protection in June 2023 . The Securities and Exchange Commission recently sound out in royal court filing that it isseeking $ 45 million from the companyfor “ violations of Union security laws . ”
Burns madetens of millions of buck sell Lordstown stockduring all of this . Late last yr , he buy the Lordstown asset for about $ 10 million through a holding company called LAS Capital , which has investments in three other startups .
The new startup is a reunion even beyond the hand truck . Of the 16 employees who name LandX Motors as their employer on LinkedIn , 13 of them used to bring at Lordstown Motors . Duane Hughes , the executive who replaced Burns at Workhorse in 2019 ( and was replaced in 2021 amid that inauguration ’s own struggles ) , is on the paperwork filed with the state of Michigan . ( Julio Rodriguez is also now the principal financial officer of LAS Capital . )
“ I believed then , and I consider even more today , in what we ramp up at Lordstown . That ’s why I bought back the assets and rehired most of the applied science squad , ” Burnstold Autoweek in December .
