Lordstown Motors has experienced a minor setback in the development of its new Endurance electric pickup truck after one of its prototypes burned to the ground during testing in Michigan.
According to Michigan NBC affiliate WFMJ, the Farmington Hills Fire Department was dispatched to assist with a vehicle fire on January 13th, 2021. When they arrived on the scene, they discovered a 2021 Lordstown Endurance prototype engulfed in flames. The driver of the vehicle, Pirakalathan Pathmanathan, told police he was a director of powertrain at Lordstown Motors and that the vehicle was an early pre-production prototype that the company had recently cleared for internal testing.
Pathmanathan explained he and two co-workers had been driving the vehicle for about ten minutes when he noticed something was wrong and pulled over to the side of the road. The truck caught fire shortly afterward, at which point he called emergency services.
In a statement sent to media, Lordstown Motors confirmed the prototype had caught fire, but it did not offer any insight into the cause of the blaze.
“We do not generally comment on individual testing conditions,” a Lordstown Motors spokesperson told WFMJ. “However, we do want to acknowledge that, on January 13, we did have an event during a test with a development mule, and not a full Endurance pickup truck. No one was hurt, and like all of our test findings, we do it to create a great product.”
The Lordstown Endurance is a battery-electric pickup truck for fleet usage. The truck will be built at the former GM Lordstown Assembly plant in Ohio, which the automaker sold to Lordstown Motors for an undisclosed sum back in 2019. The production Endurance will be powered by four in-wheel hub motors, making four-wheel-drive, and will able to travel up to 250 miles on a full charge. The truck will launch in Crew Cab configuration with a medium bed length and is priced from $52,500 USD, or $45,000 with potential federal rebates factored in.
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Comments
That’s not an Endurance pickup. It was actually a gm pickup testing an Endurance powertrain. Look at the wheel arches and tail lamp openings.
Um, If your driver’s name, read it out loud with me, Pirakalathan Pathmanathan, i wouldn’t expect any different result. Yeah everybody knows that America is lack of drivers so we have to import immigrants from the countries that main means of transportation cow and donkey. Like that, Here’s your five billion dollars order cancellation, thank you.
I am amazed that you can determine where someone was born by their name. Almost magical. Not.
Old news
About what is to be expected! Glad nobody was incinerated or hurt.
A good Irish name.
EVs are dangerous unproven technology that should not be on the road.
Don’t be dumb troll.
Melania Hilton
They said the same thing about Hyundais and KIAs in yesterday’s article
EV’s are like Covid-19 vaccine never to be trusted. Why not just stay with the proven battery and combustion system
SHOCKING! Is there a master disconnect for the main battery?
way too much current for that,if you got lucky and a fire truck was following you, if they do not carry them now they will be carrying big,insulated cable cutters
I remember reading about this in January. I’m glad no one was hurt.
This is one of the dangers of early electric vehicles. I’ll give Lordstown a pass since it’s an early prototype that I’m sure they put through many stringent tests. As long as they can iron out any bugs so this doesn’t happen in their production vehicles.
This is a TEST, this is only a TEST!!
These are test that have to be done to make these ev safe i would rather have this happen now instead of down the road when millions have been sold , keep up the good work lordstown motors I am patiently waiting for mine
wow,, can’t believe people are still coming out from under their rocks with statements against all electric cars. As if we haven’t done insane damage to our oceans, atmosphere and land near extraction points. As if they’ve actually done any research into different existing programs of energy production and its sustainability. But no need thousands of other have and all come to the same conclusion. You just need to worry about doing you part and trying to be a little less arrogant.. easy way is to just go lease or buy and electric car. I did.. and believe me I didn’t want to drive anything that felt like it had as much character driving as a new smart Blender.. but keeping an open mind I was dead wrong about the experience of driving an electric car. And I can assure you that after 6 months at the most. You’ll never want to buy or drive a conventional bucket of bolts. Once you get used to the silent, smoothness and torq that crush anything you were ever used to driving. And if that’s not enough. Once you realize that your cars on track to be paying for itself through gas’s savings,, and huge saving on maintenancelile oil changes , break pads, other fluids and random stupid parts breaking. Like all the time. You’ll wish you had bought one sooner. but don’t worry you’ll be forced to soon anyway.. so give up making yourself look so stupid like the morons who refuse to wear masks, and think Trump actually cares about them & poor country ass.. as if rich businesss men actually have anything in common with average people looking out for their welfare as they fill their pockets with anything they cab get away with taking .. have fun driving your electric car in about 10 years or so. Coulda a started 10 yrs ago and saves 20-40k on burning gas..
The sky falling?
“…but don’t worry you’ll be forced to soon anyway….” and…essentially: Trump (is evil) Trump (is evil) and so on, and on, and on. Geez Louise, Gomer. Go run that rant past 10 people off the street and your favorite psychologist and see if they too, think you need some serious mental health counseling, This isn’t FaceBook, ya know. You may be right about some things – maybe not – but your expressed contempt, hostility, and desire for certain segments of the population to be “forced” to do things your way is illustrative of your need for help. Please…seek counseling. Go spew your venom somewhere else. People on here want to read about GM and automobile news – not be lectured by an extremist. RCS
I thought when cng came out it would take off like wildfire way less emissions and engines last twice as long why it did not I do not have a clue other than lack of cng infrastructure investment.I do not get the blame trump for every single thing of the last century I bet somewhere out there they are saying trump sent women to set-up cuomo.
Back to the drawing board we go.
Workhorse not getting USPS vehicle contract. Lordstown’s truck catching fire. A few more set backs and GM may be getting its factory back.
Hilarious, the technology isn’t there yet for a EV in a Truck or SUV. Infact not even in a Tesla. Look at the Tesla Customer complaints. Like I said “Hilarious!!!😂😂😂
That’s a silverado!! That’s not a friggin Lucid! Just look at the wheels, the shape of the vehicle is totally different. This is fake news! Anyways, stop repeating this bogus OLD NEWS. it’s now March! This fake report came out in January 13th!
Old news and exact parrot of the previous reports from almost 2 months ago. So much for reporting these days.
Honestly, it looks kickass and probably would buy one.
I’m a pilot. When pilots see photos from small airplane crashes where there’s no evidence of fire, our first thought – generally – is the crash was a result of running out of fuel.
This was a battery powered vehicle – no internal combustion engine, no fossil fuels. Yet what’s left looks significantly worse than any gasoline-fueled vehicle that experienced a gasoline-fueled fire – from (missing) bumper to bumper, to the tires being melted off.
Just how explosive and flammable are these batteries??? How toxic were the fumes emitted during the burn? How much environmental damage occurred as some materials leached into the ground (and clearly contaminated the air)?
What if an event like this occurred in a tunnel or on a bridge or (under) an overpass?? Not only does the possibility exist that people can be seriously injured or even killed, but the the possibility of structural damage to infrastructure is real and even likely with a fire like this one.
This technology is not yet ready for public roads.
I remember a gasoline tanker exploding in a tunnel east of SF.
How about you parked it in your garage and went to bed?
when have to upgrade your electric service to 400 amps to charge your car you will be required to also upgrade your water service for fire sprinklers and your personal fire hose. fire departments are basically to keep fires from spreading to your neighbors house
Again! Twice?! Dropping my shares now.
Glad to see it burned up🤣😆😂
Hey Sean what about the coal and other Fossil fuels we have to burn to make electrical outlets work to charge our cars? And I hate to say this but you need way more then 259 miles of range for a pickup truck. I do agree on the cheaper maintenance and fuel costs.
I agree with Pat. As long as the Coal Trains keep running 24/7 to the power generating stations, the Radioactive waste from Nuclear Power production can only be buried, electric vehicles will NOT reduce pollution. Until an electric vehicle can be self sustaining and recharge themselves from 30 mph and up, they will never be successful. The other point being is that customers want all the “Bells and Whistles” which use electricity which require more endurance from the batteries. Until an alternate power source is found Diesel and Gas powered vehicles are the only reliable source of power for the long haul. An example would be the Power Outage in Texas. What would have happened if all their vehicles were electric? No way to recharge them without using a fossil fuel source. Something the Environmentalists should think of!
The world is NOT ready for Electric Vehicles ONLY !
You do realize that a majority of the power stations that froze up were fossil fuel stations right? THe renewables acutally faired significantly better during the storm. Get your head out of your butt.
s.e. wis. has already shut down a 2 unit coal plant that was scheduled to run till 2050 and says it will shutdown 3units of a 5unit plant they would probably shut the last 2 units but they only went online 10 yrs. ago they will probably go to the state and say they need to raise rates because they did not get there moneys worth out of the plants. the sun does not shine at night and 1/3 of the days are cloudy so if the wind doesn’t blow like a tornado I would not doubt car chargers will have to be hooked up to radio activated shutdown boxes.I guess there will be a lot of high paying on call on snow days union jobs to brush off the solyndra panels.
If it wasn’t a pickup, I’d have expected it to be a KIA.
or a bolt
What? My CoBOLT has 265K miles on it. It also gets 30MPG? Top that Bolt…
surprised,how many homes are burned down by cell phones every year? circuit boards make things worse window a/cs,dehumidifiers,and dishwashers etc.etc.etc rarely started fires before they put boards in them.
Gasoline tankers (and other flammable/explosive cargo) are prohibited in tunnels for a reason – there are instructions to “exit” the roadway well in advance of tunnels’ entrances. The use and/or carrying of certain cell phones and battery-powered electronic devices are prohibited on aircraft for a reason – you can’t pull over and stop at flight level 385.
As Mel Carpenter taught me very early in private pilot ground school, “There’s only one time when you can have too much fuel on board your aircraft: when it’s on fire.” Back then I never imagined the fuel source for a catastrophic fire would be a battery.
I never heard about anything you cannot carry-on,inside checked luggage yes
Electric cars are just like Covid-19 vaccine
ooooh noooo
I wonder how muchGM paid Lordstown to say that was their truck even though it was clearly a Chevy.