Ain’t good news if you dislike ev trucks.
Headline should say “news”
The CEO is a former colleague of mine: Ed Hightower. I said Ed would get it done, he has.
Shipments suspended b/c of problems with the quality of their suppliers’ products? hmmm … sort of makes a person wonder how an electronics or computer company handles that problem? They must have a bevy of vendors, yet these sorts of electronics companies seem to be able to sort out the vendor problems, and continue to ship products.
Is the problem the parts they are buying are particularly difficult to make? Or that they aren’t employing the standard method most electronics companies use, inspecting parts received from vendors, comparing what they receive to the part-procurement-spec document? One of the company’s I had an association with had staff who did nothing other than inspecting incoming parts. And other staff who decided based on statistics what % of each shipment needed to be inspected.
A factory that has produced 30 vehicles and 50% were crap? Sounds like a crap fest. And workers get paid to do what? Stand around?
Even well experienced automobile manufacturers like GM, Ford, Toyota, Subaru, BMW, and Nissan (I must have missed some) have had issues with their EVs. I’m sure that Lordstown Motors has an experienced team, but being a startup just adds to the difficulties. Add to that the short range and it’s not something I am interested in either. EVs are fine by me and I like them better then hybrids since they aren’t a combination of ICE and BEV. I see that as added complexity that I don’t need. I don’t need unlimited range with a short time out to fill the gas tank and can afford the hour it takes to recharge from about 15% to 100%.
Cars are not modular plug and play like computers have become. A majority of parts are bespoke for that vehicle. The car company pays for the tooling and so owns the design.
They should have done final qualification testing off of production tools and processes to identify these problems. But this is a startup and that may not have happened. The delay is for the supplier to fix its problem since there is no second source.
In the early design and production phase for many if not most new-technology-related products, this sort of this isn’t all that unusual. San Francisco city is purchasing new public toilets, and the first two are predicted to cost nearly a million dollars each. The news media loves this sort of story, creates controversy, ears and eyes to sell to the advertisers; the problem is, they don’t explain what the average cost of the toilettes will be once the prototype phase ends the full production phase begins.
Anybody remember that news story that circulated in the 1980’s about the scandalous cost of the space shuttle’s toilet? News media: What’s it made of, solid gold? … lol … Not much could be done about that cost, b/c there were only a few space shuttles to install it in.
I expect everyone here has seen the vdo of that newly designed rocket and its first test launch today. To put their best foot forward, they said it was successful at getting off the ground, and the problem was posed instead as the rocket’s “unplanned rapid disassembly phase” … lol.
It was a developmental flight and success is measured differently than for an operational flight. One project I worked on had a proof of concept instrument to look at solar x-rays as a measure of space weather. It stopped functioning after about 6 months. The NOAA project manager said she was very happy with the results though because it proved that an instrument of that type works. That launch was in 2001 and NOAA still buys instruments of that type including 4 of the same design as the one that failed early.
So they made something like 60 trucks? One thing though, that front end reminds me of our 58 Chevy. The hood was a constant problem getting sand blasted requiring repainting. Suggest they add a metal grill instead if they are actually going to be driven.
I don’t like the front grill area appearance either. I’m not sure why though, maybe it is just that it doesn’t look like other vehicles, something I could get used to. Like you say, it does seem like any paint would get damaged pretty quickly by grit in the oncoming air.