Steve Burns, the ousted founder of the bankrupt EV startup Lordstown Motors, has launched a new company, LandX Motors. The new company prominently features the same electric pickup truck that Burns once claimed would outperform competitors like Tesla, Ford, and General Motors.
LandX Motors and the Endurance
Burns, a self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur,” purchased most of the remaining assets of Lordstown Motors during its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. This included a significant portion of its electric pickup trucks. On the LandX Motors website, Burns outlines his vision for the company as charting “the future of mobility.” He plans to build a range of vehicles on the platform that underpins the former Endurance. Although LandX Motors does not explicitly refer to the trucks as the Endurance, a video on the website features EV trucks bearing the Lordstown badge.
A source familiar with the company’s plans revealed to TechCrunch that the focus is not so much on the Endurance truck, but rather the underlying platform, software, and engineering behind it. However, with the former Lordstown trucks featuring prominently on the company’s website and video, the extent of this plan remains unclear.
Unresolved Issues and Future Plans
The LandX Motors website does not clarify how Burns intends to overcome the significant challenges that Lordstown Motors failed to address. Notably, Lordstown Motors executives admitted before filing for bankruptcy protection that the cost to build the Endurance far exceeded its $60,000 retail price. The company also does not disclose where or how it plans to build the trucks. A LandX Motors spokesperson responded to an email but did not provide any further information and declined to answer questions.
This is not the first time Burns has founded a new electric vehicle company with ties to a previous one. He founded Lordstown Motors in 2019 after leaving another struggling EV startup, Workhorse. He then struck a deal with Workhorse to license the designs for a pickup truck project that became the Endurance.
Lordstown Motors’ Downfall and LandX Motors’ Future
Lordstown Motors faced a federal investigation in early 2021 for misleading investors during the merger process about the number of orders it had secured for the Endurance. Burns and then-chief financial officer Julio Rodriguez resigned after the company’s internal investigation found that they had made misleading statements. The startup struggled and eventually sold the factory to iPhone maker Foxconn. The Taiwanese electronics giant started building Endurance trucks in late 2022, but they were quickly recalled, and the two companies had a falling out. Lordstown filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2023.
Burns made tens of millions of dollars selling Lordstown stock during this period. Late last year, he purchased the Lordstown assets for about $10 million through a holding company called LAS Capital, which has investments in three other startups.
LandX Motors is a reunion of sorts. Of the 16 employees who list LandX Motors as their employer on LinkedIn, 13 of them used to work at Lordstown Motors. Duane Hughes, the executive who replaced Burns at Workhorse in 2019 (and was replaced in 2021 amid that startup’s own struggles), is on the paperwork filed with the state of Michigan. (Julio Rodriguez is also now the chief financial officer of LAS Capital.)
“I believed then, and I believe even more today, in what we built at Lordstown. That’s why I bought back the assets and rehired most of the engineering team,” Burns told Autoweek in December.
