LORDSTOWN – Lordstown Motors Corp. and affiliated Cincinnati-based company Workhorse lost out today on a massive contract to build electric vehicles for the U.S. Postal Service after the postal service announced it awarded the 10-year contract to a Wisconsin company.

The U.S. Postal Service awarded the contract to Oshkosh Defense, the postal service announced this afternoon.

The contract has been estimated at a value of more than $8 billion.

Under the contract’s initial $482 million investment, Oshkosh Defense will finalize the production design of the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle and will assemble 50,000 to 165,000 of them over 10 years.

The vehicles will be equipped with either fuel-efficient internal combustion engines or battery electric powertrains and can be retrofitted to keep pace with advances in electric vehicle technologies. The initial investment includes plant tooling and build-out for the U.S. manufacturing facility where final vehicle assembly will occur.

Lordstown Motors and Workhorse were finalists in the bidding process that would have brought much of the work to the new Lordstown plant.

Workhorse has a minority 10 percent stake in Lordstown Motors, which will use Workhorse technology to produce the Endurance, all-electric pickup truck.

Steve Burns, founder and CEO of Lordstown Motors, also founded Workhorse.

For more on this story, read Wednesday’s edition.