Canoo spent twice its annual revenue on CEO’s private jets last year
EV startup Canoo paid $1.7 million for CEO Tony Aquila’s private jet bills, twice its total revenue last year. According to its earnings report released this week, Canoo lost $302 million in 2023 – but it’s apparently been champagne and caviar for its top executive.
Canoo, which hasn’t turned a profit as a public company, brought in $886,000 last year in revenue, according to its full-year earnings report filed Monday. But, as TechCrunch first cited, Aquila’s hefty travel bill included “air travel expenses for either, at our option, first-class airfare or the business use of his private jet,” the company said in the filing.
Aquila, who is also the company’s chairman, owns about 14% of Canoo. In 2022, Canoo spent $1.3 million on his air travel.
Certainly, the EV maker is burning through cash as it attempts to ramp up volume production with its commercial vehicles and avoid the fate of fallen EV startups such as Arrival, Lordstown Motors, and Proterra. Launched in 2017, the Texas-based company makes passenger vans, delivery vans for Walmart, and crew transport vehicles for NASA. Last year, Canoo started its first commercial fleet customer deliveries from its Oklahoma City manufacturing facility with a 20,000-unit run-rate production target.
In January, Canoo revealed that USPS will purchase six of its LDV 190 delivery vans. The move is part of USPS’s $40 billion investment plan to upgrade the network.
Just last month, Canoo initiated a 1-for-23 reverse stock split to avoid being delisted on NASDAQ, and its stock surged after it received “Foreign Trade Zone” approval for its Oklahoma facility. At that facility, Canoo’s rugged new EV pickup dubbed American Bulldog was spotted being tested.
The EV maker sources over 90% of its parts in the US and free trade partners, with about 70% from North America.
Electrek’s Take
Well, all that lavish private jet spending is certainly not a great look for an EV company committed to a greener future, and Canoo has been struggling for a while now. After reporting an annual loss of $302 million on Monday, its stock dropped as much as 38% during extended trading hours. Business Insider reports that the company will need to rely on investors to make it through the year – and heavy expenditures on private jets can be seen as a red flag, particularly for a company in trouble.
Canoo reacted to all the bad press about its earning this week, sparked by a Reuters post, with a LinkedIn post saying that they were “more than a little disappointed” that they hadn’t been asked to comment – and particularly didn’t like that Reuters had connected the bad results to a slowdown in the consumer EV market, considering Canoo is all about commercial vehicles.
“Had Reuters called Canoo for comment we would have told them that we raised $324 million in 2022, and $288 million in 2023 and we are currently in discussions with several entities and individuals about investing in the company this year,” the company wrote. “We would have also told them that we have begun manufacturing, expect to step up our manufacturing effort this year, and have a backlog of orders. And, that we are not in the consumer market, we are in the commercial market.”
Not sure if we can blame a Reuters’ oversight on their problems, but the company is certainly feeling the heat.
Photo: Canoo
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China just laid out a plan to roll out over 100,000 ultra-fast EV charging stations by 2027 – and they’ll all be open to the public.
The National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) joint notice, issued on Monday, asks local authorities to put together construction plans for highway service areas and prioritize the ones that see 40% or more usage during holiday travel rushes.
The NDRC notes that China’s ultra-fast EV charging infrastructure needs upgrading as more 800V EVs hit the road. Those high-voltage platforms can handle super-fast charging in as little as 10 to 30 minutes, but only if the charging hardware is up to speed.
China had 31.4 million EVs on the road at the end of 2024 – nearly 9% of the country’s total vehicle fleet. But charging access is still catching up. As of May 2025, there were 14.4 million charging points, or roughly 1 for every 2.2 EVs.
To keep the grid running smoothly, China wants new chargers to be smart, with dynamic pricing to incentivize off-peak charging and solar and storage to power the charging stations.
To make the business side work, the government is pushing for 10-year leases for charging station operators, and it’s backing the buildout with local government bonds.
The NDRC emphasized that the DC fast chargers built will be open to the public. This is a big deal because a lot of fast chargers in China aren’t. For example, BYD’s new megawatt chargers aren’t open to third-party vehicles.
As of September 2024, China had expanded its charging infrastructure to 11.4 million EV chargers, but only 3.3 million were public.
Read more: California now has nearly 50% more EV chargers than gas nozzles
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Tesla is starting to experience some consequences for misleading Full Self Driving customers – at least that’s the finding of one arbitration ruling that has Tesla refunding one customer $10,000 plus legal fees for failing to deliver on their promises. Find out more on today’s legally challenging episode of Quick Charge!
An arbitration “court” found that Tesla misled customers with its Full Self Driving product, and has now been forced to refund at least one person’s $10,000 payment (plus legal fees) for the not-quite autonomous driving software. France, too, is piling on claims of deceptive business practices – but there’s some good news for FSD fans! If you’re still willing to pay for it, Tesla will thrown in 0% financing on a brand new Cybertruck.
Check out the relevant links, below, to learn more.
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