Edward Hightower is an automotive EV OEM CEO, and global product creation, industrialization, and valuedriving executive. He is the founder & CEO of Accra EV – a company focused on commercializing and industrializing electric cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs in Africa, starting with Ghana. The company’s subsidiary, EV House LTD, markets premium electric vehicles to Ghana’s business and government fleets.
Hightower previously served as the chief executive officer and president of Lordstown Motors Corp., a USbased original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of electric vehicles for the commercial fleet market. He led the company’s operational turnaround and successfully completed the engineering development, certification, launch, and customer delivery of the Endurance all-electric full-size pickup truck. Under his leadership:
- Over 700 jobs were saved
- Lordstown became one of the few new light-duty EV OEMs – alongside Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid – to bring a vehicle from concept to market, and
- Lordstown Endurance was selected as a finalist for North American Truck of the Year
Along with these accomplishments, Hightower was recognized as the first African American CEO of a publicly traded automaker. He also served as CEO of the EV design and engineering joint venture between Lordstown and Foxconn of Taiwan.
Earlier, Hightower served in several senior new-product development, engineering, strategy, brand marketing, and P&L executive leadership roles between Ford, BMW, and GM. At GM, he led the company’s $20 billion global crossover vehicles business as the vehicle line executive. He also worked as a hands-on growth, strategy, operations, and M&A consultant at AlixPartners, LLP and Motoring Ventures LLC, which Hightower founded. He has also served on the boards for several public, private, and not-for-profit companies.
Hightower authored the book Motoring Africa: Sustainable Automotive Industrialization, published in 2018. Based on his industry experiences in China, India, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil, Motoring Africa makes the case and offers an actionable roadmap for economic development by building sustainable automotive manufacturing businesses in six of the 54 countries in Africa. Hightower had the honor of presenting Motoring Africa at the African Union HQ in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He also served as an advisor to the CEO and leadership team during the development of the electric bus manufacturer Kiira Motors Corp. of Uganda.
Originally from Chicago, Hightower earned a BS in General Engineering from the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign and an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.
