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Endurance goes to school

LMC CEO speaks to Lordstown students about company, truck

Staff photo / R. Michael Semple Seventh-graders Emma Deweese, 12, left; Paul David Steider, 13; and Adrianna Jenkins, 13, got a chance to explore the Endurance prototype and listen to Lordstown Motors Corp. CEO Steve Burns speak about the vehicle, expected to launch in September, and business. Burns fielded questions from the junior high and high school students at Lordstown High School.

LORDSTOWN — Lordstown Motors Corp. CEO Steve Burns was quizzed more about his startup company and its first offering, the Endurance truck — from its appearance and towing capacity to battery life and growth opportunities at the company trying to revolutionize the electric-truck market.

The questions weren’t from auto industry analysts, investors or even customers, but junior high and high school students in Lordstown.

“For you young ones, think in terms of what is the future,” Burns said. “If you’re in seventh grade now, electric cars are going to about all there is allowed on the road. At least as far as buying a new vehicle, that is all there is going to be.”

Burns on Tuesday spent about 30 minutes with the group to talk about the truck and its mechanisms, his company’s culture and youth movement, and he even gave a bit of a lesson in physics.

Sophomore Caden Minor asked what was the towing capacity of the truck. He wanted to know because his family is involved in dirt-track racing and often hauls heavy-trailer loads.

“We always have to haul big trailers and stuff like, that and I was curious about that,” Minor, 16, said. “If you have a heavy trailer on it, what is it going to do? Is it going to die quicker? Is it going to suck the life from that battery? And just to see how it matches up against a regular brand new truck.”

The Endurance has a towing capacity of 7,500 pounds. It has a range of at least 250 miles and has the gas equivalent of 75 mpg.

“After 95 years of development and countless billions of engineering hours and production hours, the best the world can do is a 15 mpg pickup truck,” Burns said. “And that is because they are stuck, they are stuck at the laws of physics. I’ve bumped my head a lot of times against physics, and I always lose.”

The company is operating at the former General Motors assembly complex it purchased and is readying to launch the Endurance in September. If the company is successful, it would be the first electric pickup introduced to the market.

“How can a small company in Lordstown, Ohio, be the first and there is really is only one answer. It’s our people,” Burns said. “We have 500 folks over there that believe deep, deep down that we are going to make history over there.”

A white-and-black version of the pickup was parked outside the school.

“It looks like a pickup truck from the outside, slightly different, a little different styling, but it’s a pickup truck,” Burns said. “We didn’t want to make it too different so people wouldn’t be afraid of it, but underneath it, it’s like no other truck ever made.”

Burns fielded questions about the distinctive wheels on the truck, its lack of front grill and technology.

“We put those gold rims in there to really drive home that there is something different about this truck,” Burns said. “That truck, even the prototype out there should get better traction than any of the 30 million pickup trucks on the road today. That’s a bold statement; it’s just my gut. Obviously I can’t take those 30 million and have a tug of war with them, but I’m pretty sure about that.”

The wheels contain each of the truck’s in-hub motors.

High school principal Jim Vivo said, “Getting people like this in here (from) right in the back yard is invaluable to our kids.”

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