The Lordstown story takes a new and somewhat bizarre turn.
Back in 2022, Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn purchased a former GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio from now-defunct Lordstown Motors Corp., which itself bought the factory in 2019 to try and launch a new EV pickup truck onto the market. Three years after Foxconn acquired the plant for $230 million, the company is now selling the plant, the land and the on-site equipment to a company formed only 12 days prior to the August 4 announcement — but that isn’t the whole story.
Foxconn, officially known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., originally took an interest in partnering with Lordstown to build its ‘Endurance’ pickup. The deal turned sour in 2023, though, with Foxconn pulling away from the EV venture and Lordstown Motors Corp. subsequently filing for bankruptcy, then turning around and suing Foxconn citing fraud and “willful” failure to live up to its promises.
Now, Foxconn is selling its Lordstown assets to Crescent Dune LLC, a Delaware-incorporated entity which it says is an “existing business partner”, even though it is less than two weeks old. Part of the sale includes $88 million for land and buildings, as well as $287 million for machinery and equipment associated with the Lordstown plant. Despite the sale, though, Foxconn will will maintain its presence at the facility, but use the facility to pivot toward “high-growth” sectors including AI and cloud computing.
Despite the ill-fated Lordstown deal and a similar arrangement to build the Fisker Pear — before Fisker, too, went belly up in 2024 — Foxconn did utilize the Ohio plant with approximately 500 workers to build an electric tractor for Monarch Tractor, a California-based startup. With this sale, it’s unclear how that production may proceed moving forward with Foxconn’s move toward high-performance computing infrastructure, rather than building electric vehicles.
