He also said the company was still actively seeking new funding to increase production.
“It’s a new day at Lordstown Motors, and there is no and will be no disruption to our plans to start production,” the company’s new executive chairwoman, Angela Strand, said. She had previously served as the lead independent director on Lordstown’s board.
Lordstown’s stock had climbed to nearly $31 a share earlier this year, but fell to about $7 in May, after Mr. Burns acknowledged that the thousands of “pre-orders” the company had been touting were not binding orders. Some large orders the company had announced had also come from “influencers” who did not plan to buy the trucks themselves, the company said on Monday.
Mr. Schmidt, who joined Lordstown in 2019 after a stint at Tesla, said on Tuesday that the company had “binding” orders for all the trucks the company is likely to make in 2021 and 2022. But he declined to disclose the total number, name specific customers or say whether they had paid deposits to secure their orders.
“Those are firm orders,” Mr. Schmidt said. “They have been reconfirmed last week.”
Lordstown shares jumped more than 10 percent on Tuesday.
He said production would start in September even though the company’s Endurance truck has not passed all the required crash and engineering tests needed to be cleared for sale in the United States. Trucks that roll off its assembly line would be held until the testing is complete and then modified, if necessary, before being shipped to customers, a highly unusual practice in the auto industry.