Ailing commercial electric pickup truck maker Lordstown Motors on Tuesday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, put itself up for sale and sued former partner Foxconn, alleging fraud and failure to live up to its financial commitments.
Lordstown had been struggling in the past couple of years. It was able to hold on financially for a while because it sold its Lordstown, Ohio, plant to Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronic components maker, for $230 million a year ago and agreed to let Foxconn become the contract assembler of the Endurance commercial electric pickup truck. Lordstown production employees became Foxconn employees.
In court filings, one of Foxconn’s affiliates later agreed to invest approximately $170 million “of additional equity capital in the business and to work closely with Lordstown on a new vehicle development platform.”