Lordstown Motors CEO on early EV fleet orders, reviving GM plant and hiring

Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns joined Jim Cramer on "Mad Money" to discuss steps the start-up has taken to put an all-electric truck on the road in 2021. Subscribe to CNBC PRO for access to investor and analyst insights: https://cnb.cx/2Vtntx6

When General Motors decided to pull the plug on a sedan plant in northeast Ohio almost two years ago, the Detroit-based automaker was reacting to America’s growing interest in trucks and SUVs.

The move eliminated more than 1,300 jobs, creating a headache for Lordstown, Ohio, and the local economy that depended on the factory, drawing the ire of President Donald Trump.

Lordstown Motors, an electric vehicle start-up that now owns the assembly plant in its namesake city, is giving the manufacturing site new meaning and hopes to employ more at the plant than its predecessor by the end of 2021. The company is manufacturing Endurance, an all-electric pickup.

“We’re in a race to bring this back to life and, you know, come out with the first electric pickup truck in the United States,” Steve Burns, the chief executive of Lordstown Motors, told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in a “Mad Money” interview.

Lordstown Motors, which bought the site from GM and began trading on the Nasdaq in late October via a special purpose acquisition, expects to double its staff at the plant to 500 by the end of next month and hire another 1,500 workers there in 2021.

The company is trying to restore purpose in the local community after GM ended production of the slow-selling Cruze sedan, the only vehicle being assembled at the factory, which operated there for five decades.

“It had been here for 53 years and shut down kind of abruptly, so a lot of pain in the area,” Burns said.

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