Hub-motoring in Lordstown's novel Endurance

“It's been exciting to create a new vehicle from the ground up,” Chi Yip, Lordstown Motors' director of vehicle integration, asserted from the passenger seat, as we accelerated onto Michigan I-94. Our vehicle, a new Endurance electric all-wheel-drive pickup, was VIN 006, the sixth production unit out of the company's eastern Ohio plant. It's the first significant production vehicle to feature electric hub motors in all four wheels. And like every Endurance, our test-drive truck was painted white.

Yip is a veteran vehicle-dynamics engineer with extensive experience at Meritor, Ford, and an Asian EV start-up before joining Lordstown Motors three years ago. He's based at the company's Farmington Hills, MI, engineering office and was heavily involved in the truck's clean sheet ‘skateboard’ development.