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Struggling electric vehicle start-up Lordstown Motors to sell its Ohio plant to Taiwanese iPhone assembler Foxconn, which has its own ambitions for electric vehicles, Bloomberg reports. The deal could be announced as early as Thursday evening.
Lordstown Motors bought the 6.2 million square foot facility from General Motors in 2019 shortly after it was shut down by the Detroit automaker – a move that angered then President Trump. The startup previously announced in August that it planned to lease space at the plant in an attempt to make money amid a severe cash shortage. Reuters also reports that a sale is about to happen.
Since its purchase, Lordstown Motors has spent around $ 240 million preparing the plant for the construction of its electric pickup truck, the Endurance. A Lordstown Motors spokesperson declined to comment. Foxconn did not respond to a request for comment.
When GM sold the plant to Lordstown Motors, Trump hailed the deal as “BIG NEWS FOR OHIO!” But the startup – which was founded by the former CEO of Workhorse, another struggling electric vehicle startup – has encountered incredible problems since, despite going public and raising hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020. The CEO of Lordstown Motors has been kicked out. earlier this year after being caught lying about the veracity of his truck’s preorders. The startup also lowered its initial production targets for this truck. The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have both launched investigations into Lordstown Motors, and the company said it only had enough money to survive until mid-2022.
Foxconn has spent much of the past year talking about the expansion of electric vehicles as a way to branch out from consumer electronics. It has made deals with Geely, China’s largest private automaker, as well as with Fisker Inc., a California-based electric vehicle startup that has yet to manufacture an electric vehicle. Foxconn has also developed its own platform of electric vehicles which it intends to sell to other automakers.
In March, Foxconn said he would reveal where he wanted to build EVs with Fisker Inc. by July, but that self-imposed deadline came and went. The company had considered using the nearly empty complex it had built in Wisconsin – another project the Trump administration heavily touted – but Fisker founder Henrik Fisker said he didn’t want not build its cars in a condition that would not allow it to sell directly. to consumers.
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