hicles in the first year and, starting in 2022,
hire more people to build other electric ve-
KEEP ON TRUCKIN’
VICE PRESIDENT
MIKE PENCE HELPED
UNVEIL THE NEW
ENDURANCE ELECTRIC
TRUCK IN JUNE (LEFT),
WHICH CINCINNATIAN
JIM BURNS (RIGHT)
WILL BE BUILDING IN
LORDSTOWN, OHIO.
stown Motors. Burns and Hamamoto did
not respond to requests to be interviewed
for this story.
Hamamoto and another principal inves-
tor in DiamondPeak, Mark Walsh, are well
known on Wall Street as real estate deal-
makers. Both have had dramatic upturns
and downturns in their careers. Walsh was
flying high as head of Lehman Brothers’s
real estate division, specializing in high-
risk subprime and commercial mortgages,
until the bubble burst on the housing mar-
ket and the investment bank went belly-
up in September 2008. Even so, Walsh was
paid $70 million in the three years before
the nation’s economic collapse.
In 2016, Hamamoto merged his North-
Star real estate and assets management
companies with the investment manage-
ment firm Colony Capital, headed by Trump
confidante Thomas Barrack, in what was
supposed to produce a real estate invest-
ment trust valued at $9 billion. The venture
sank soon after, but Hamamoto managed to
P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E S Y L O R D T O W N M O T O R S C O R P.
make $27 million selling off his shares. He
told industry analysts in August that Dia-
mondPeak looked at “hundreds of compa-
nies” before choosing to invest in Lordstown
Motors because the company “stood out” as
a leader in the manufacture of electric ve-
hicles and light-duty trucks.
Burns will likely need every bit of Dia-
mondPeak’s capital reserves to convert the
Lordstown plant from making a traditional
compact car like the Cruze to an innovative
electric pickup truck worthy of the hype.
Lordstown’s other financial backers include
General Motors, which is investing $75 mil-
lion into the company, as well as Burns’s
previous Loveland-based startup, Work-
horse Group. Together, these investors are
expected to pour $675 million into the new
company by year’s end.
After more than a year of pursuing in-
vestors, Burns and Lordstown Motors now
appear to have the financial backing they
need to make a go of it, says Sam Abuel-
samid, a principal analyst specializing in
“Lordstown Motors is coming into a very
competitive market for electric pickups
in the next year and a half,” says industry
analyst Sam Abuelsamid.
electric vehicles for Guidehouse Insights.
“Whether they’re going to be successful
is another story,” says Abuelsamid. “Lord-
stown Motors really has a big challenge
ahead. They’re coming into a very competi-
tive market for electric pickups in the next
year and a half.”
If the merger with DiamondPeak pro-
ceeds as planned, Lordstown will hire about
600 employees to start building the Endur-
ance. Burns told The Detroit Free Press in
August that he plans to build 20,000 ve-
55
hicles, possibly SUVs or a mid-size pickup.
In a teleconference with industry analysts
that same month, Burns said the merger
will allow Lordstown to at least break even
by 2022, the first full year of production.
By 2024, he said, he expects the company
to manufacture 100,000 vehicles and turn
a 10 percent profit.
Burns has pushed back the startup date
for production multiple times, from late
2020 to early 2021 and most recently to
mid-2021. But the earlier the better, Abuel-
samid says, if Lordstown wants to emerge
a step ahead of its competitors. Although
the pandemic-induced recession may end
up disrupting the best-laid plans, the field
of companies promising to deliver electric
pickup trucks over the next three years in-
cludes GM, Ford, Tesla, Irvine, California–
based startup Rivian, and Phoenix-based
startup Nikola Motors.
Automakers and investors are con-
vinced that the lower operating costs and
spine-mashing acceleration of electric mo-
tors will persuade America’s pickup truck
owners to give up their beloved gas guzzlers
for what Burns has called “the new normal.”
Wall Street is a big believer. Investors are
sinking their money into electric pickup
companies with a zeal perhaps surpassed
only by those pinning their hopes on an ef-
fective vaccine for COVID-19. Rivian alone
has seen a cash influx of more than $5 bil-
lion since the beginning of 2019, including
$500 million from Ford and $700 million
from Amazon, which plans to use Rivian’s
trucks for its delivery fleet.
Tesla’s publicity-savvy CEO Elon Musk
has already built predictable anticipation
around the company’s new Cybertruck,
production of which is slated to begin in
late 2022. And even though GM is invest-
ing in Lordstown Motors, the Big Three
automaker has its own plans for an electric
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