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EV Truck Maker Lordstown Picks Irvine

Irvine’s base of electric vehicle makers got another energy boost last week, as Ohio’s Lordstown Motors Corp. established a new service center in the Spectrum area of the city, in preparation for the launch of its first vehicle later this year.

The upstart electric pickup truck maker (Nasdaq: RIDE), with a market cap of $4.3 billion and 100,000 preorders from commercial fleets reported for its initial vehicle, is leasing a 27,000-square-foot office facility at the intersection of Alton Parkway and Toledo Way.

It’s the first reported location outside the Midwest for the closely watched company, whose main production facility, a former General Motors assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, runs nearly 6.2 million square feet.

The company is backed in part by GM. Lordstown went public last summer via a reverse merger; its shares have more than doubled in price since then.

Lordstown’s first vehicle, the Endurance, has a range of 250 miles, the equivalent of 600hp and can tow up to 7,500 lbs., the company says. The first delivery of the trucks is expected around September. The trucks are to be “priced at $45,000 after federal rebate,” the company says.

“We’re built in Ohio but will be serviced throughout the country, so we’ve worked our way out west,” the company said last week in announcing the opening of the Irvine location.

The company is actively looking for a variety of engineering positions for the Irvine base, according to its website. It expected to employ nearly 500 people companywide at the end of 2020, with a goal of growing to 1,500 people at the end of this year, according to regulatory filings.

Applied Hub

The Irvine facility is owned by medical device maker Rancho Santa Margarita-based device maker Applied Medical Resources Corp., Costar Group Inc. records indicate. Applied has other, larger buildings it occupies nearby on nearly 20 acres of land in the Spectrum.

Applied, Orange County’s No. 2 medical device maker by employee count, has a real estate portfolio in South County that tops 1.6 million square feet.

The lease marks the second notable service center to move ahead in Irvine for an electric vehicle maker.

The Business Journal was first to report last month that Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA), the world’s most valuable car company with a valuation near $840 billion, was moving ahead with its first facility in the city, a 58,000-square-foot building fronting Jamboree Road, at the intersection of Barranca Parkway.

Work on the Tesla location has intensified in recent weeks, and a Tesla sign went up on the building last week. Industry reports say Tesla is looking to open on average one new service center every week in 2021, to keep pace with rising sales figures of its vehicles.

Cluster

Lordstown late last year said it would be establishing a base in Orange County. It cited the state of California “aggressively promoting more widespread adoption of electric vehicles,” for its decision to open an office here.

OC’s cluster of electric vehicle makers has been growing in the past year.

Rivian Automotive LLC, previously headquartered in Michigan but now based in Irvine, has leased more than 350,000 square feet of space in Irvine and Tustin as it prepares to launch its own electric-powered pickup trucks, delivery vans and SUVs.

It has posted hundreds of job openings for its local operations, and in December brought on Laura Schwab as its vice president of sales and marketing.

Schwab, the former Americas president for Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd., is among Rivian’s most high-profile local hires to date. The company’s valuation is approaching $25 billion after a recent fund raise.

Lordstown’s Irvine location, at 9451 Toledo Way, is about a mile from the nearly 260,000-square-foot headquarters of fellow upstart carmaker Karma Automotive, which was OC’s fourth-largest carmaker by employee count as of 2020.

Karma filed a lawsuit at the end of October against Lordstown, citing theft of intellectual property, breach of contract and poaching employees.

The ongoing suit’s similar in nature to one that Tesla filed against Rivian last summer.

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Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the Editor-in-Chief of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.
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