Canoo

Canoo was founded in late 2017 under the initial name Evelozcity by former BMW and Faraday Future executives Stefan Krause and Ulrich Kranz, alongside designer Richard Kim. Rebranding as Canoo in 2019, the company unveiled its core concept: a minimalist, steer-by-wire electric vehicle built entirely atop a flat, modular architecture that consolidated the battery, powertrain, and suspension into a single chassis. In late 2020, Canoo went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger with Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp. IV. Following the public listing, executive chairman Tony Aquila took over leadership, steering the company away from its original consumer subscription-only model toward direct fleet and commercial sales, engineering partnerships, and specialized government contracts including vehicles for NASA's Artemis program and the U.S. Department of Defense. Despite announcing high-profile fleet agreements with Walmart and Kingbee and acquiring a 630,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Oklahoma City, Canoo struggled continuously with high cash burn, delayed production schedules, and severe liquidity crunches. Efforts to pivot production internally and acquire idle assets from defunct competitors failed to resolve its financial distress, culminating in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in January 2025.