EV startup Canoo (GOEV) hit several milestones in the third quarter, including delivering its first EV built at its new Oklahoma facility.
Canoo delivers first “Made in Oklahoma” EV in Q3
“We are now in our manufacturing and revenue-generation phase,” Tony Aquila, Canoo CEO, said after delivering Q3 results this week.
Although it took “nearly three years to get to this point,” as Aquila explained, Canoo began generating its first revenue during the quarter.
Canoo announced it had delivered its first “Made in Oklahoma” EV to the state Tuesday. The company’s Lifestyle Delivery Vehicles (LDVs) are the first commercial motor vehicles to be built in the state since 2006.
The EVs were the first batch of an agreement between Canoo and the state for up to 1,000 vehicles.
The news comes after Canoo said it began generating revenue from its first three vehicles delivered to NASA in July.
Canoo’s journey to get here has been anything but smooth, but the EV maker is finally entering the “revenue-generation phase.”
Canoo begins generating revenue
“We continue to move toward our goal of achieving 20,000 annual unit capacity,” Canoo’s leader explained this week.
Despite the progress, “We still have things left to prove.” Canoo is cutting spending with an expected EBITDA loss of $85M to $105M in the second half of 2023. Capital spending is forecasted between $30M to $40M, down from $70M to $100M.
Canoo posted revenue of $519M on the sale of its first EV, while losses narrowed to $112M in Q3, compared to over $117M last year. The company’s net losses reached $273.6M through September.
The EV maker ended the quarter with $8.3M in cash and equivalents, compared to $5M at the end of June.
Canoo also unveiled its “American Bulldog” electric pickup truck last week. The EV pickup is a tribute to the “American spirit and reflects this country’s innovation,” according to Aquila.
Electrek’s Take
With its “Made in America” approach, Canoo expects to benefit from the IRA’s Commercial Clean Vehicle Tax Credit. Canoo customers are eligible for a tax credit of up to $7,500.
Although it’s been anything but a smooth ride, Canoo finally generated its first revenue. The company has repeatedly doubted its ability to continue operations over the past few years due to a lack of funding.
The third quarter was a step in the right direction, but with a gloomy economic outlook, the next few months could present even more of a challenge for the young EV startup as it ramps production.
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GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.
GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.
As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:
seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona
Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.
“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”
GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.
Electrek’s Take
Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”
All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.
While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.
The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.
“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”
The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.
There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”
In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”