Lordstown's EV Behind Ford And Rivian With Embarrassingly Short 280 Km EPA Range

Lordstown Motors is now tackling a problem with their first EV (electric vehicle). With?things switching up in the automotive industry, companies are coming up with their own versions of an EV.? ?

Lordstown The Endurance Pick-Up Truck's Low EPA Rating Raises Concern

Lordstown Website

The Lordstown Endurance full-size battery-electric pickup truck with wheel hub motors came out in September 2022 in collaboration with Foxconn at its Ohio factory.?Now the Environmental Protection Agency has rated the pickup truck’s range at just 174 miles (280 km).??

For those unaware, these numbers don’t look great for an EV. While the Ford all-wheel-drive F-150 Lightning manages 240 miles (386 km) with a smaller battery and the Rivian R1T manages 289 miles (465 km), the Lordstown truck is visibly falling behind.

Lordstown Website

The range is also short of what the company originally claimed the truck would manage. It had been projected that the Endurance truck would manage an EPA-rated 250 miles of driving.

Even though the executives at Lordstown have not said much about the EPA rating, Autoblog notes that these EPA ratings are sometimes too conservative. This was evident when the Porsche Taycan (an electric sports car) was recorded as regularly exceeding its government-rated range in real-world driving.?

Lordstown’s Endurance Pickup Truck Tows More Than The F-150

Lordstown Website

Lordstown’s Endurance also pulls more than the F-150, even though it has less than half the payload capacity. Though a point to be noted, Ford is also priced at $399 (nearly Rs 33,000) lower.

However, if the EPA’s rating holds up even on the road, it largely limits the appeal of the Endurance to customers who only buy the truck for short-distance commutes. For people who need the truck to manage long-distance travel on a regular basis, like workers who travel to different cities while on the job. The truck would make a lot less sense.?

Well, the EPA rating is just another sprout of trouble for the company. Lordstown is still grappling with production issues that have slowed down its output in the market. Last year, General Motors sold its stake in the company, and its manufacturing partner Foxconn is already threatening to pull out over an alleged stock-related breach of contract. So, it has become somewhat of a question mark if the Endurance will be competitive even after Lordstown manages to solve its other problems at hand.