EV startup Canoo this week confirmed fleet-management company Zeeba has ordered at least 3,000 of its electric vans.
The latter company has signed an agreement for 5,450 vehicles, with an initial binding agreement of 3,000 vehicles through 2024, Canoo said in a press release. Zeeba will lease those vehicles to small- and medium-sized businesses, but Canoo is still vague on a production timeline.
Canoo Lifestyle Vehicle
Canoo is "finalizing our multi-year allocations for 2023 customer deliveries and will share our manufacturing plan with the broader market shortly," Canoo CEO Tony Aquila said in a statement. Late last year Canoo shifted its manufacturing plan away from the Netherlands to Arkansas, where it says it will build vehicles before it again shifts production to Oklahoma.
Zeeba's order includes both the Lifestyle Vehicle that was Canoo's initially discussed production model and the Lifestyle Delivery Vehicle, a cargo-only version with up to 120 cubic feet of cargo space, Canoo claims. The fleet manager joins Walmart in ordering vehicles from the EV startup—which was on the verge of collapse.
Canoo battery - June 2021 iinvestor presentation
Canoo started with a model that was aimed toward personal users, and offered the vehicles only by subscription. It also had an early partnership with Hyundai, but that has since dissolved. It's shown a compact pickup truck based on the same architecture as the vans, which seemed to tack back toward personal users.
The quirky electric vans are due to be made with Tesla-style 2170 cylindrical cells supplied by Panasonic, with a structural battery and in-house-developed components. With some firm orders on the books, perhaps these vans will finally see production and ensure that its engineering work doesn't go to waste.
