Seven-year-old electric vehicle startup Canoo has filed for bankruptcy and will “cease operations.” The company is liquidating these assets in a Chapter 7 proceeding in Delaware Bankruptcy Court. The company said in a press release published late on Friday that “discussions with foreign capital sources” proved unsuccessful, and it was also unable to secure funding from the US Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, which had been on loan during the days of the Biden administration. . Canoo said in the bankruptcy filing that he has owed money to less than 49 creditors, with outstanding debts totaling between $10 million and $50 million. He claims to have less than $50,000 in assets. The bankruptcy filing comes just weeks after Canoo laid off its remaining employees and idled a factory in Oklahoma. The company is struggling through 2024 to get more than a few electric vans into the hands of potential customers, and has experienced several executive departures. There was only $700,000 in the bank in mid-November. Canoo is the latest EV startup to go bankrupt after merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) as a shortcut to going public. Electric Last Mile Solutions was the first in June 2022. But since then, Fisker, Lordstown Motors, Proterra, Lion Electric, and Arrival have all filed for various levels of bankruptcy protection in their various home states. (Canoo is buying Arrival’s assets out of insolvency in 2024, though it’s unclear whether that will work.) Canoo announced plans to merge with SPAC Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp. around $600 million. In the years since its launch, the company has built some impressive electric cars and handed them over to partners — some of whom paid — willing to test drive the vehicles. The United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense, and NASA all own or have Canoo vehicles. At one point, the company even invited Walmart, which agreed to buy 10,000 EVs from Canoo by 2022. But the deal was essentially non-binding and risk-free for the retail giant. Canoo was founded in late 2017 by a splinter group of executives fed up with the environmental drama of another EV startup where they worked at the time, Faraday Future. Originally called Evelozcity, the executive developed a modular electric vehicle platform capable of powering cabins of various shapes and sizes, and using advanced technologies like steer-by-wire systems. The idea of Canoo is attractive enough that the startup at one point is in talks with Apple, which is interested in a potential investment or even acquisition as a way to boost the technology giant’s secret electric car project. But Canoo underwent several pivots after going public and getting a new chairman and CEO in Tony Aquila. A serial entrepreneur, Aquila immediately refocused Canoo away from selling to consumers and prioritized the commercial fleet. On his watch, Canoo has repeatedly changed plans on whether to build its own electric vehicles or outsource the work. At one point Canoo announced it was moving its headquarters to Bentonville, Arkansas – home of Walmart – but then never really followed through. However, the company spent years trying to establish a manufacturing facility in Oklahoma. Signs of bankruptcy were bubbling up all week. A Reddit user noticed that the company’s billboard outside its office in Justin, Texas had been taken down. Many employees on furlough told TechCrunch that they received official termination notices. Some people who had put down a $100 deposit while the company was still planning to sell to regular customers got a refund. This story develops…
