On Tuesday, electric truck startup Lordstown Motors (US:RIDE) said that its full-size electric Endurance pickup truck passed several final regulatory milestones and would begin shipping to customers.
The company said the truck achieved full homologation, a critical condition to start sales. It’s also received EPA and CARB certifications and passed crash tests.
“These were the key conditions to start customer sales. The first units of our initial batch of 500 are leaving the Foxconn EV Ohio plant for customer delivery. As disclosed earlier, production volume will ramp slowly and accelerate as we resolve supply chain constraints,” the company said in a news release.
Ohio-based Lordstown, founded by Steve Burns, makes light-duty fleet vehicles. The company operates from a former General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.
Several large investors reported holdings in the company recently, including founder Steve Burns, Morgan Stanley, and Foxconn Ventures.
Foxconn put another $170 million into the company on Nov. 7 via a mix of $70 million common shares and up to $100 million Series A preferred shares.
The Taiwanese electronics giant raised its investments across the electric vehicle sector over the last few years, announcing deals with US startup Fisker Inc (US:FSR) and Indian conglomerate Vedanta Ltd (IN:VEDL, US:VEDL)
On Nov. 14, Morgan Stanley filed a 13F Securities and Exchange Commission form disclosing it raised its passive Lordstown stake to 1.6 million shares or about $3 million from October’s 1.4 million shares worth $2.1 million.
Meanwhile, founder Stephen Burns has been selling down his stake, from 41.3 million shares a year ago to the latest reported 26.7 million. He’s cut his stake to 12.3% from 22.4% over the last 12 months.
Burns resigned as CEO in September 2021 after an investigation into allegations that he and other executives lied about preorders for the company’s electric pickup truck. The startup’s chief financial officer Julio Rodriguez also resigned.
This article originally appeared on Fintel
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