Steve Burns, the ousted founder, chairman and CEO of bankrupt EV startup Lordstown Motors, has settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over misleading investors about demand for the company’s flagship all-electric Endurance pickup truck.
The SEC charged Lordstown Motors in February 2024 with misleading investors about the sales prospects of its Endurance electric pickup truck.
Lordstown Motors was founded in April 2019 as an offshoot of Burns’ other company, Workhorse Group.
During and after the merger, Lordstown received $780 million from investors, according to the SEC.
Lordstown Motors attracted the attention and investment of GM and even acquired the 6.2 million-square-foot assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio from the automaker.
A decade ago, both Fisker Automotive and Coda sold themselves off to other buyers in their Chapter 11 restructurings.
Now known as Nu Ride Inc., the reconstituted version of Lordstown Motors will also pursue “potential business combinations,” though it did not say what kinds of mergers it is seeking.
It sold the former General Motors factory it once owned to Foxconn; the assets related to its electric pickup truck were snapped up by Lordstown founder Steve Burns.
Lordstown Motors sued Foxconn in June 2023 when it initially filed for bankruptcy protection.
Lordstown’s lawsuit has more or less been on hold while the Chapter 11 proceedings played out.
When electric-vehicle startup Telo Trucks announced its pint-sized pickup, people predictably went nuts.
Fleet customers went nuts, too.
“There’s this unspoken thing where fleet companies that do work in cities can no longer buy small trucks,” Jason Marks, Telo Truck’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.
“We will still want to address the early users, and we want to intermingle that with delivering to bigger fleet customers at the same time.”With that opportunity comes more funding.
Rivian is notably similar in that it’s chasing both consumers and fleet customers, though its production ramp is radically different.
Lordstown Motors charged with misleading investors about the sales potential of its EV pickupThe Securities and Exchange Commission has charged bankrupt Lordstown Motors with misleading investors about the sales prospects of its Endurance electric pickup truck.
Lordstown has agreed to pay $25.5 million as a result — money that the SEC says will go towards settling a number of pending class action lawsuits against the company.
“We allege that, in a highly competitive race to deliver the first mass-produced electric pickup truck to the U.S. market, Lordstown oversold true demand for the Endurance,” Mark Cave, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement said in a statement.
“Exaggerations that misrepresent a public company’s competitive advantages distort the capital markets and foil investors’ ability to make informed decisions about where to put their money.”The SEC says its investigation into Lordstown Motors is ongoing.
This story is developing…
Beleaguered electric trucking company Nikola has sold the Badger electric pickup truck assets it was once supposed to build with General Motors.
Embr now owns the intellectual property associated with the Badger pickup truck, as well as the assets related to Nikola’s abandoned off-road and personal water craft vehicles.
News of the deal to sell the Badger program comes at an odd time.
But it revealed the Badger pickup in February 2020, just a few months before it went public in a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.
Worthen said Nikola is clawing back 500,000 of those shares Milton gave Sparks as part of the deal.
Uber has quietly started testing a feature that lets gig workers pick up prepaid items from local stores and deliver them to customers in India.
It suggests that Uber sees a business opportunity in delivering items from local stores in India — just like in the U.S.
For instance, the item set for pickup at the local store needs to be five kilograms (11 lbs) or less.
In addition to Store Pickup, Uber offers its regular Connect feature to let customers deliver packages through its app.
However, the Store Pickup feature is specifically for arranging deliveries from local stores.
Vietnamese EV startup VinFast is trying to get into the electric pickup truck game, as it revealed a new concept called the VF Wild at CES 2024 in Las Vegas.
The company announced it also plans to start selling its smallest EV, the VF3, outside of Vietnam as previously hinted.
The VF3 is a plucky little EV that VinFast announced in Vietnam earlier this year.
Developing a truck and globally launching a compact EV aren’t even the biggest things on VinFast’s plate.
Globally, the overwhelming majority of VinFast’s EV sales have been to a taxi company owned by Vuong.
Select Waymo One riders can now get picked up or dropped off by the company’s robotaxis curbside at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
Waymo became the first autonomous vehicle operator in the U.S. to launch a paid robotaxi service to and from the airport in November 2022.
The average trip rating for its airport trips has been about 4.7 out of 5 stars, Waymo says.
Waymo’s trusted testers are riders who have been vetted by the company and have signed nondisclosure agreements.
“Last year, we partnered with Waymo to become the first airport in the world to offer travelers the ability to take an autonomous vehicle to the airport,” said Chad Makovsky, aviation director at Sky Harbor Airport, in a statement.
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