Staff photo / R. Michael Semple Lordstown Motors Corp. CEO Steve Burns shows the body of its all-electric pickup truck, the Endurance, during a tour of the plant by Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Monday.

LORDSTOWN — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has asked for information from electric truck startup Lordstown Motors Corp. in light of a stinging short-sellers report last week that accuses the company of misleading investors.

Company founder and CEO Steve Burns briefly acknowledged Friday’s report by New York City-based Hindenburg Research during the company’s first-ever earnings conference call Wednesday, saying Lordstown Motors’ board of directors has formed a special committee to review the matter.

He said the company is cooperating with the SEC inquiry but declined to comment further until the special committee finished its review.

Lordstown Motors stock — traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker “RIDE” — was down 0.85 percent in regular trading to close Wednesday at $15.09 per share ahead of the call, held after the market closed.

Its stock continued to slip in after-hours trading, falling as low as $14.30 per share.

The report by Hindenburg, a financial investment research firm known for shorting stocks, alleges Lordstown Motors misled its investors regarding preorders for its battery-powered truck, the Endurance. It also characterized the company as a mirage.

Wednesday’s call to announce the company’s fourth quarter and full-year 2020 financial results revealed it reported a net loss of $101 million last year and had $630 million cash-on-hand at the end of 2020.

The company is proceeding toward production in September. It’s in the process of making beta prototypes, the first of which is expected to roll of the production line in nine days. After that, the company plans to produce one beta per day for the next 57 days for for crash and durability testing and validation.

“We expect to make an Endurance every six minutes when we start production this year and work our way up to an Endurance every four minutes next year,” Burns said. “We expect our first-mover advantage in the market place will enable us to capture pent up demand of pickup truck users across the country that are tired of roughly 16 to 17 miles per gallon and desire a more climate-friendly truck.”

The company expects to spend $250 million to $275 million this year to increase plant capacity to make 60,000 vehicles per year to match greater-than-anticipated interest in the truck and speed up the company’s second vehicle, a high-top van / recreational vehicle intended to be sold through Camping World.

Lordstown Motors already has in place an agreement with Camping World to provide a nationwide service and parts network for the Endurance through affiliate Good Sam.

The van, built on same skateboard chassis as the Endurance, would be four-wheel drive and with a target range of 350 miles. A demo version of the van should be unveiled this summer with production next year.

“We are also building out our own Lordstown service stations in those areas in which we expect the greatest cluster of demand, at least initially that is California and the Midwest broadly,” Burns said. “To that end, we recently obtained our first dealer license to sell direct in California, and we also opened our first sales and service center in Irvine, Calif., which also houses our design team that focuses on softwear for our in-vehicle systems.”

Some of the investment also is planned for additional tools to keep in-house components to create a 5-star crash-rated vehicle and for higher supply chain costs related to the viral outbreak.

Already, the company has received a 5-star crash rating on computer simulations and “believe the software validation will translate well to real world testing,” Rich Schmidt, Lordstown Motors president, said.

Also, battery pack and hub motor production lines at the 6.2 million-square-foot plant, the former General Motors assembly plant, are being installed, Schmidt said.

Burns also addressed the Jan. 13 fire of an Endurance test mule on its maiden voyage in Farmington Hills, Mich., a Detroit suburb where Lordstown Motors has a satellite research and development center.

The truck was destroyed.

Burns said the cause was connected to “human error” in assembling the hand-built truck.

“Naturally, we have corrected that. I don’t want to dismiss it, but I do want to say in this business of electric vehicles, it does happen. Thermal really has to be carefully watched, so we feel really good about that learning and a lot of other learnings,” Burns said. “We have third-party validation people testing the battery now just in case we missed anything.”

The company also is going through the application process with the U.S. Department of Energy for at least a $250 million through a program that helps the automotive sector develop more efficient vehicles.

The government, Burns said, is performing its due diligence on the application. It appears, however, Lordstown Motors has met the criteria for a loan.

“Whether we draw down on it, it’s almost like a line of credit we can draw down on as needed,” Burns said. “We don’t know if we will.”

If the company does, “we would use it to maybe pull forward additional vehicles faster, the third vehicle maybe, but we are going through all of the processes with them and have been working with them for quite some time.”