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In 2019, a worker in front of the disused General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, called for investments to be made - a start-up did
Photo: Craig F. Walker / Boston Globe / Getty Images
Shortly before the electric car maker Tesla triumphantly entered the S&P 500 index this week, a future competitor of the Californian star company made its debut on the stock market largely unnoticed: Lordstown Motors, which is not based in one of the hot start-up metropolises, but in the dreary rust belt of the USA: in Lordstown, Ohio.
In terms of ambitions, however, the newcomer's boss can definitely take on Elon Musk.
Steve Burns wants to build the “world's first fully electric pick-up for company fleets”.
The tech entrepreneur praises himself that this innovation comes from Lordstown. He is aiming for 600,000 vehicles per year - more than Tesla produces today, 17 years after it was founded.
At the moment, Burns' dream seems rather distant.
The start of production was postponed until autumn 2021 due to the pandemic.
Nevertheless, from the point of view of some politicians, the comeback of a region is sealed, the decline began when the steel mill in nearby Youngstown on "Black Monday" 1977 put thousands of workers on the streets.
But now the Mahoning Valley in northeast Ohio is to be reinvented as the "Voltage Valley".
"The future is bright," said Lordstown's mayor before the first silver prototype of the "Endurance" rolled onto the podium of the factory floor in the summer.
A guest from Washington got out of the car: Vice President Mike Pence.
He brought greetings from Donald Trump, "the best friend the US auto industry has ever had in the Oval Office."
In reality, neither the American auto industry nor the people of Lords and Youngstowns owe much to Trump.
Lordstown Motors built its business on ruins: for 20 million dollars - and with the help of a 40 million loan from the previous owner - the start-up took over General Motors' disused car plant in Lordstown in 2019, including its inventory.
But without workers.
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Proudly presented: Lordstown Motors' first fully electric pick-up in front of the White House in September
Photo: Shealah Craighead / White House / ZUMA Wire / imago images
"Don't move, don't sell your houses," Trump had shouted to the applauding crowd two years earlier at a performance in Youngstown.
But there was no industrial renaissance.
The number of industrial workers in Youngstown and the surrounding area fell by 14 percent in the three years after he took office in early 2017.
A loss of 4,000 jobs.
Most of the last 1,500 GM auto factory employees accepted the company's offer to move to another location somewhere in the United States.
Tim O'Hara also sold his house.
He left the home where he and his two daughters grew up and moved to Kentucky, half a mile away.
The 61-year-old has already retired after more than four decades at GM, but his wife has a few more years to go.
Perhaps she would have found something new in the self-proclaimed Voltage Valley, at Lordstown Motors or in the battery factory that GM is building together with Korean partner LG Chem and which will one day employ 1,100 people.
In any case, the tariff conditions would have been significantly worse than before at GM.
The local auto union UAW 1112, once headed by Tim O'Hara, is now orphaned.
"We still have 20 active members," says O'Hara.
Once upon a time there were well over a thousand.
Trump's broken promises to help the region out of the crisis have not harmed.
On the contrary: in the presidential election in November, he became the first Republican to win Mahoning County since 1972.
In neighboring Trumbull County, where GM's abandoned Lordstown factory is located, he outclassed challenger Biden by more than ten percentage points.
O'Hara suspects that it is also due to the exodus of union members like him that the Democrats have lost support in the former steel region: "That's 1000 or 2000 votes that would normally have gone to Biden." And in the past few years also many young people moved away in search of a better future.
David Betras has a different explanation for Trump's triumph.
The night before, the longtime chairman of the Democrats in Mahoning County had an encounter in the restaurant that has had an impact.
A young man at the next table explained to him in detail that Trump's election victory had been stolen, and went into conspiracy fantasies such as Hillary Clinton drinking the blood of babies.
Betras turned to an acquaintance a couple of tables down the street who he believes is "an intelligent man."
"Do you see where that got us?" He asked the Trump voter, referring to the crude theories of the person sitting next to him.
"Hmm," he replied, "but Trump did a good job."
Betras is convinced that logic can no longer be used to get at the Trump voters: "Right is left, left is right, up is down, down is up." has done a lot of good for the economy here, «says Betras sarcastically.
It could now be Trump's successor, of all people, who is helping the Mahoning Valley with the long-awaited upswing.
Biden has made the switch to electromobility a priority for his government.
The investment bank Goldman Sachs is therefore confident that Lordstown Motors has a bright future ahead of it.
At the start of the stock market, the investment experts gave a buy recommendation for the "RIDE" share - this is the name under which the company operates after a merger on the stock exchange.
However, there are also risks, the analysts write in their report: if the start of sales of the "Endurance" is further delayed or if CEO Burns does not capture the market share he dreams of.
The e-truck start-up Nicola from Phoenix, which has got into deep turbulence, has shown how quickly hopes can burst.
The Nicola share has now lost 80 percent compared to its high in the summer.
Lordstown Motors CEO Burns, however, is confident that he will reach “the promised land” when his “Endurance” rolls onto the road.
Shortly before Christmas, he made a big promise to the people in Lordstown when they performed in the six million square meter factory that once worked day and night: “The goal is that more people will work here than in the best times of GM. "
Former GM employee O'Hara would like to believe this will happen.
The trade unionist says there is great hope in his home country.
"But also the skepticism."
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