Canoo, the electric automaker that became a publicly traded company last year, is expanding its U.S. footprint with plans to establish its headquarters and another facility in Bentonville, Arkansas — a city most famously connected with Walmart.
Canoo also announced Panasonic as its battery supplier and other expansion plans during its third-quarter earnings call Monday, including the establishment of an R&D center in Fayetteville, Arkansas and expanded operations at its first U.S. factory in Oklahoma, which is currently under construction. On top of the expansion news, Canoo said it was moving up the start of production of its lifestyle vehicle from early 2023 to begin before the fourth quarter of 2022.
Earlier this year, Canoo made dual manufacturing announcements. The company named Dutch company VDL Nedcar as its contract manufacturing partner for its lifestyle vehicle. VDL Nedcar will manufacture the vehicle for the U.S. & EU markets while Canoo builds its U.S.-based mega microfactory. Canoo previously estimated the Nedcar facility would build up to 1,000 units in 2022 for U.S. and European markets, with a target of 15,000 units in 2023. CEO and Chair Tony Aquila upgraded that figure in August to 25,000 units in 2023.
The company announced in June plans to build its first factory in Oklahoma. At the time, the state had committed $300 million in non-dilutive financial incentives to support the facility and Phase 2 of manufacturing. On Monday, Aquila said the state has added another $100 million in additional non-dilutive financial incentives, pushing the total to $400 million.
“Our discipline continues to be Big News or No News. Therefore, we will accelerate our advanced manufacturing production in the U.S. to begin before Q4 2022,” Aquila said in a statement, adding that the company is targeting about $100 million in vehicle orders with the states and universities where it is locating facilities.
The Oklahoma factory will now include R&D, software development, customer support and finance centers, according to the company.
On the money front, the company reported a net loss of $80.9 million in the third quarter, about a fourfold increase from the $23.4 million in losses it reported in the same period last year.
