Canoo is an American new EV automaker brand, formerly Evelozcity, established in California in December 2017, with a market value peaking above $4 billion. The brand name "Canoo" means a container for free exploration. Founders are former Faraday Future CFO Stefan Kraus (former BMW CFO) and BMW i3 project manager Ulrich Kranz ("Father of BMW i Series"), who left due to disagreements with Jia Yueting to found the company. The founding team quickly expanded to 9 people, with members mostly from BMW, Uber, and Ford.
Canoo is headquartered in Torrance, California, listed on NASDAQ (code GOEV), focusing on a skateboard chassis strategy. The brand vision is to redefine urban mobility, providing ultimate interior space and flexible storage design, targeting commercial and general consumer markets.
In December 2017, Canoo was registered as Evelozcity. It secured early funding in early 2019 and released its first model in September of the same year. In 2020, it announced a skateboard chassis partnership with Hyundai and completed its listing via SPAC. Between 2021 and 2022, executives left one after another: Co-founder Kranz jumped to Apple in 2021, the engineering director resigned in 2022, and the entire 9-person founding team left.
In September 2024, Canoo announced the suspension of the Oklahoma City factory operations, then relocated to Texas. On January 17, 2025, the company officially filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation and ceased operations with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The application stated total assets of approximately $126 million and total liabilities of approximately $164 million, remaining cash less than $50,000. Thus, Canoo ended its vehicle manufacturing career with almost zero deliveries.
Canoo derived multiple models around the skateboard chassis, covering vans, pickups, and light commercial vehicles. All models share the Multi-Purpose Platform (MPP), with differences only in body shape.
LDV (Multi-purpose Delivery Van) Series: Includes LDV 130 and LDV 190. LDV 190 is developed based on the MPP platform, Class 2 electric truck, range over 200 miles, space increased by 30%, payload capacity increased by 21%.
Pickup/Truck: Expands electric cargo trucks and compact pickups, wheelbase 2850mm, supports single motor RWD or dual motor 4WD configuration, equipped with various extension platforms for loading tools.
Sleek Innovative Multi-purpose Passenger Car: Early released multi-purpose electric MPV offered Delivery, Base, Premium versions, starting price $34,750, focusing on maximizing interior space.
Canoo's market performance was extremely bleak. Total sales in 2023 were only 22 units, including 17 units completed in the fourth quarter, revenue $886,000. Annual net loss was about $303 million. In 2024, it failed to reverse the trend, with most quarters generating less than $1 million in revenue.
Despite intending cooperation such as NASA specialized vehicle contracts, Walmart purchase orders up to 4,500 units, etc., none of these orders converted into large-scale deliveries. Canoo accumulated 9 rounds of financing, total amount about $1.118 billion, but the cash burn rate was far faster than the ability to generate cash, eventually becoming one of the typical representatives of the American new car force bubble.
Canoo's core choice on the technology route was the skateboard chassis platform, which at the time was even more advanced than companies like Rivian and Tesla that also took the modular chassis route.
Upper and Lower Body Decoupling: Canoo highly integrated key components such as battery systems and steer-by-wire onto the chassis, forming an independent complete functional unit. This design supports multiple models sharing the chassis, significantly shortening the development cycle and reducing costs.
Battery and Chassis Integration: Canoo is the world's first electric vehicle to use transverse leaf spring suspension, reducing the intrusion of shock towers into interior space. Batteries are directly encapsulated inside the skateboard without a separate high-voltage battery enclosure. Design capacity ranges from 20 to 80 kWh, using 2170 cylindrical cell modules with a 400V voltage platform, and a range upper limit greater than 300 miles.
Motor and Drive System: The skateboard platform supports RWD and dual-motor 4WD configurations, with motor peak efficiency up to 97%, total maximum power of approximately 372 kW (500 horsepower), and peak torque of approximately 770 N·m.
Canoo's overseas business expansion was mainly reflected in cooperation with traditional automakers. In February 2020, Canoo and Hyundai announced a partnership to jointly develop a pure electric vehicle platform based on Canoo's skateboard architecture, with Hyundai using the technology to reduce development costs. However, Hyundai did not mass-produce the skateboard chassis.
Canoo's Asian business did not materialize, as its products were not launched or sold in Asian markets such as China, nor were any overseas assembly bases established. Before the company ran out of funds, it intended to enter the Middle East market but failed.
Canoo has officially ended as a vehicle manufacturer. After the Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation process began, all company assets were handed over to the federal bankruptcy trustee for liquidation and distribution to creditors. All nine co-founders have left, and the brand no longer has any possibility of restarting. Its skateboard chassis technology and related patent assets will be the most attractive components in the liquidation auction, and may be acquired by other automakers or technical research institutions. However, Canoo's practice of automotive manufacturing as an independent brand has come to an end.
The outcome of Canoo reflects the survival dilemma faced by American new car-making forces during the capital winter. Strong founding team backgrounds and brilliant strategic concepts cannot guarantee mass production success. From BMW executive entrepreneurship to capital chain rupture to the complete exit of the main creative team, Canoo exited the new energy vehicle track in an extremely dramatic way.
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