Lordstown Motors now says it does not have ‘binding’ orders, reversing a statement by its president

• Lordstown’s president on Tuesday said the company had “binding” orders for all of its trucks until 2022.
• Days later, the company corrected those claims in filings with the Securities Exchange Commission.
• “We have no binding purchase orders or commitments from customers,” the company said.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

It has been a tumultuous week for the electric vehicle startup Lordstown Motors.

The company on Monday announced the resignation of its CEO and CFO, as well as the results of an internal investigation that found “issues regarding the accuracy of certain statements regarding the Company’s pre-orders.”

Then, at a press event on Tuesday, Lordstown President Rich Schmidt contradicted the company’s earlier position when he told the media that preorders for the Endurance pickup truck were “binding,” and were likely to cover all the vehicles the company could produce in 2021 and 2022.

“Those are firm orders we have for those two years,” Schmidt said. “They are basically binding orders that are committed here in the last two weeks.”

Lordstown’s share price went up by as much as 15% after his remarks.

But in regulatory filings on Thursday, the company reversed Schmidt’s public statements, saying that while the purchase agreements are an indicator of customer demand, “these agreements do not represent binding purchase orders or other firm purchase commitments.”

“To date, we have engaged in limited marketing activities and we have no binding purchase orders or commitments from customers,” the company said.

Lordstown previously said it has more than 100,000 preorders that were worth a total of $1.4 billion, before warning that it could run out of cash before ever starting production.

The company’s internal investigation found on some occasions its fleet preorders were from “influencers” who “did not intend to purchase Endurance trucks directly,” and that one entity “did not have the resources to complete large purchases of trucks.”

Even so, the report states Lordstown still has tens of thousands of fleet preorders and other end-users that will constitute “substantially all” of the company’s production through 2022.