Lordstown Motors Selling Ohio Plant To Foxconn For $230 Million

A condition for the deal to go through is for Foxconn to build the Lordstown Endurance electric pickup at the factory.

By: Dan Mihalascu

Oct 1, 2021 at 8:20am ET

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Lordstown Motors, the EV startup that bought GM’s Lordstown, Ohio plant in late 2019, has agreed to sell the factory to Taiwan’s Hon Hai Technology Group (a.k.a. Foxconn) in a $280 million deal.

As part of the agreement, Lordstown will get $230 million for the plant after buying it from GM for just $20 million two years ago. Furthermore, Foxconn, best known as the manufacturer of Apple’s iPhone, will buy $50 million worth of common stock in its new partner at a price of $6.8983 per share. The deal will also see Foxconn assemble the Lordstown Endurance electric pickup truck.

Regarding the last part, the two companies haven’t reached a definitive contract manufacturing agreement for the Endurance yet, and if they don’t, the entire deal falls apart as that is a condition for the facility purchase to go through. According to Automotive News citing a person familiar with the Foxconn’s schedule, the Taiwan-based company plans to start mass production of the Endurance in April.

Pending the finalization of the agreement, Lordstown Motors would also agree “to provide Foxconn with certain rights with respect to future vehicle programs.” Mind you, Lordstown Motors’ hub motor assembly line, battery module and packing line assets, certain intellectual property rights and other excluded assets are not part of the factory sell off.

The deal appears beneficial to both companies as it gives Lordstown Motors a partner that will accelerate its move into large-scale production, helping lower the high costs required to make EVs. As for Foxconn, it gets a plant in North America where it can build its open-source EV platform and do contract manufacturing for partners like Fisker.

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“We have high expectations through this partnership that we will be able to successfully integrate our resources with Lordstown Motors. In addition to achieving the goal of moving ahead our timeline to establish electric vehicle production capacity in North America, it also reflects Foxconn’s flexibility in providing design and production services for different EV customers.”

Young Liu, Chairman of Hon Hai Technology Group

One of the products Foxconn will build in Lordstown is Fisker’s Project PEAR, which stands for Personal Electric Automotive Revolution. The sub-$30,000 model was initially scheduled to enter production in the first quarter in 2024 with an initial planned production of 150,000 vehicles a year, but now Henrik Fisker says it could launch earlier.