GM Sells Lordstown Motors Stock, Walks Away From Electric Truck “Maker”
Calling Lordstown Motors a carmaker when they haven’t delivered any cars — and the one racecar they built to “prove themselves” ended in a very public, very objective failure — feels like a bit of a stretch. Nevertheless, the would-be carmaker has been hailed as a potential savior for the town of Lordstown, Ohio, and many people in the area hope the company succeeds. Success, of course, means jobs, which the region desperately needs. In an apparent vote of no confidence, GM has reportedly sold its 5% stake in Lordstown on the open market, according to GM Spokesperson Jim Cain.
“We (GM) were a small investor in the company,” Cain told the Detroit Free Press. “The goal [of our investment] was to help facilitate the sale of the (Lordstown) plant and the restart of production.”
The rest of the article doesn’t paint any rosier of a picture for the electric truck startup. The Freep writes, “On Monday, Lordstown Motors reported its fourth-quarter net loss widened to $81.2 million compared with a loss of $38 million in the year-ago period, as it was hit with $115 million in expenses. For the full year, the startup reported a $410 million loss compared with 2020’s year-end loss of $102 million.”
All is not doom and gloom for Lordstown Motors, however. It has, apparently, worked out a deal to use the same Panasonic batteries as Tesla, and is selling a portion of its Ohio factory HQ to Chinese tech giant, Foxconn, for a reported $230 million. Foxconn (it’s hoped) will help the company actually build a truck someday. (Probably.)
It’s believed that Lordstown Motors has enough money to operate through 2022, even without the Foxconn deal, but its CFO, Adam Kroll, has been quoted as saying that the company needs to finalize its deal with Foxconn and drum up another $250 million in investment if it expects to achieve any sort of, “long-term viability.”
Bigger Fish to Fry
As I type this, Ukraine is under assault by Russian forces and global trade is — if not disrupted, let’s go with “anxious” about the potential disruptions of an impending global war. As such, it seems more than a little crazy to sit here, in my American suburb, sipping a cup of fair trade coffee, and write about investment opportunities. Indeed, I am absolutely not qualified to give any sort of investment advice (like, at all), but if I found a random money pile and absolutely had to put it into an automotive stock, I can’t imagine that “RIDE” is where I’d put it.
Without Foxconn, all the team at Lordstown have managed to do, to this point, is spend money, shake hands with sketchy, p**sy-grabbing presidents, and break the hearts of a lot of good people in Ohio who just want to work. Until that deal is done — and the Tooth Fairy shows up with another $250 million, I guess — I think these guys have a better shot at winning the grueling Dakar off-road race than they do of “taking the fight to Tesla.”
That’s just me, though. What do you guys think? Does Lordstown Motors have the right, scrappy team in place today to make it happen and bring the Lordstown Endurance electric truck to market this year, or do you think this gone on long enough as it is? Head on down to the comments section at let us know!
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