General Motors has sold its Lordstown, Ohio, plant to electric truck manufacturer Lordstown Motors Corp. about six months after President Trump hailed the deal on Twitter, according to Bloomberg.
The announcement comes a year after GM said it would not allocate any future product to the now-shuttered plant. Trump, who has seized on the plant as a symbol of economic prosperity during his presidency, announced the sale in May over Twitter, saying he had spoken to GM CEO Mary Barra about the deal.
{mosads}GM confirmed shortly after the tweets that it was in discussions at the time with Workhorse, which is affiliated with Lordstown Motors but does not share ownership, saying the sale “has the potential to bring significant production and electric vehicle assembly jobs to the plant.”
The sale comes as Workhorse is bidding for a contract to manufacture electric mail trucks for the U.S. Postal Service, according to Bloomberg, although it’s not guaranteed the vehicles would be made at the Lordstown plant if the company wins the contract.
Lordstown Motors, meanwhile, is seeking a cash infusion to produce its debut model, the Endurance, a four-motor vehicle with fewer moving parts than a standard pickup and possibly require fewer repairs for fleet operators,
“We are going to be fundraising for a while,” Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns, former head of Workhorse, told Bloomberg. “We have to stand up an auto company.”
A contract between GM and the United Auto Workers reached last month allowed the automaker to permanently close the Lordstown plant.
“GM’s unilateral decision this year to close Lordstown and their continued refusal to bring a new product to the plant is a betrayal of the Mahoning Valley,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said in a statement in September.
“Lordstown auto workers are the best at what they do, and I will continue to stand with them, their families, and the entire community as we fight to bring good, UAW auto jobs to the Valley,” he added.