Lordstown Endurance Baja EV race ute revealed

It’s not even on sale yet but Lordstown has announced it plans to race its all-electric ute in an upcoming off-road race in America.

And the company has showed off the race version of its Endurance pickup truck.

The Ohio-based EV startup – which recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange with investment and funding from General Motors – that will initially only sell vehicles to fleets has committed to the San Felipe 250 in Baja on the Baja California coast on April 17.

Announcing the move on social media, Lordstown said entering a race it describes as “the most gruelling and punishing in the world” was about demonstrating the EV ute was “the toughest, most robust” of the new breed of electric pickups.

“We’ve been practising out in the Californian desert this week for the Baja and it’s everything they say =- it is gruelling,” said Lordstown CEO Steve Burns.

Burns says the goal is not to win but simply finish.

“Most vehicles that are even built for the Baja dop not finish. Our goal is to be the first electric vehicle to finish.”

The Lordstown that will race in the Baja has had a roll cage fitted and suspension beefed-up as well as chunkier tyres added.

But Burns says “all the drive components are the same”, providing a crucial test bed for the production vehicles.

The big test is to the in-wheel electric hub motors. The Endurance is one of the first EVs to feature in-hub electric motors, which have various advantages and disadvantages.

“We’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to ourselves that it can handle the hits,” said Burns, pointing to the lack of a differential and drive components as an advantage because it means fewer things to potentially fail.

“We’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to ourselves that it can handle the hits.”

Another challenge for the Lordstown Endurance is how far it will go between charges.

The race goes for 250 miles – matching the Endurance’s EV range claim – but driving flat out “through sand and mountains … uses an immense amount of energy”, he says.

“We’re planning to recharge …with our recharge time it may not let us win the race, our goal is to finish the race.”

Claimed to have 400km of EV range and produce 600 horsepower – almost 450kW – the first production versions are scheduled to be built in September 2021.

The Endurance is one of more than a dozen electric utes currently being developed.

Lordstown says it is holding more than 100,000 pre-orders for the US$68,000 ute, all from fleet buyers tempted by the promise of lower whole-of-life costs, something helped by a US$7500 tax credit.

Despite the focus on work duties, the Endurance has plenty of tech in the cabin.

There are no plans to sell the car to regular buyers in the US, although Burns says the early orders could pull that forward.

“Officially it is for fleets … we might go to consumers earlier than we thought.”

After the pickup truck Lordstown plans to use the underlying skateboard chassis for an EV van followed by a large Chevrolet Suburban-challenging SUV; “We want to leverage it across as many vehicle, so we’ll do big vehicles first,” said Burns.

While he said Lordstown had “its hands full” building its planned three-pronged large vehicle lineup, there was a chance the company would start looking at smaller EVs in future.

But that appears some time off.