News
Lordstown Endurance units head to customers for initial deliveries
Update 10:35 AM ET: Lordstown’s expected production rate for 2022 and 2023 with quotes from Q3 Earnings Call added.
Lordstown Motors announced today that the first production units of the Endurance all-electric pickup are leaving its Ohio factory and headed to customers. The Endurance officially achieved full homologation earlier this week and was fully certified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resource Board (CARB).
The first of 500 Endurance units are leaving the Foxconn EV Ohio plant for initial customer deliveries, Lordstown said in a press release. Production is expected to ramp slowly and will accelerate as the company works toward solving supply chain constraints.
“I am very proud of the Lordstown Motors and Foxconn EV Ohio team for their hard work, grit, and tenacity in achieving this milestone,” company CEO and President Edward Hightower said. “We are very excited to start delivering vehicles to our commercial fleet customers. The EnduranceTM will provide benefits to customers that use their vehicles for work. It optimizes key attributes of traction and maneuverability – with our in-wheel hub motors, safety – with our five-star crash performance, and value in the segment.”
Lordstown launched commercial production of the Endurance in late September. The company stated it had built only two vehicles just days after manufacturing had started. The company plans to build 30 units by the end of 2022, with the remaining 470 initial Endurance trucks finished in the first half of 2023. Lordstown detailed this in its Q3 2022 Earnings Call:
“Approximately 30 commercial units of the first batch are estimated to be built by the end of 2022, with the remainder built in the first half of 2023.”
After initial commercial production began, Lordstown still did not have the essential EPA green light that was needed to begin customer deliveries. The EPA and CARB both needed to certify the Endurance’s emissions and range through testing. Certifications were recently received and were followed by FMVSS crash and non-crash testing, which the vehicle also passed.
In just one short year, Lordstown has gone from being on the verge of financial ruin to having customer-ready units of its first vehicle roll off production lines. Last year, Lordstown was bailed out by Foxconn, the iPhone manufacturer, when the company bought the automaker’s Ohio production facility in a joint partnership. Production began after financial stability and corporate restructuring occurred at Lordstown. Edward Hightower took over as CEO after Steve Burns was ousted from the position.
Lordstown and Foxconn recently made their partnership all but permanent as the iPhone manufacturer pumped an additional $170 million in additional equity investments earlier this month. $100 million of the additional investments will be used to fund Lordstown’s “development and design activities for a new electric vehicle program in collaboration with Foxconn.” The remaining $70 million will be used to fund general corporate activities.
Some of Foxconn’s funding is pending Lordstown’s ability to achieve EV program milestones. You can read a complete breakdown here.
Technically, Lordstown and Foxconn’s joint venture was terminated, and all project developments are now expected to fall under Lordstown Motor Company.
Disclosure: Joey Klender is not a Lordstown or Foxconn investor.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
News
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Investor's Corner
Tesla short sellers win big after shares fall after earnings
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.