Canoo gets ready to leave California
According to Canoo, the main reason for moving to Oklahoma is “the co-location of engineering and manufacturing within the company’s nearly 500,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Oklahoma City,” one of the two locations in the state. The goal is to increase efficiencies and “foster greater collaboration” as the company looks to ramp up production of its electric cargo vehicles.
The move to Texas was an easy decision. The company’s executive leadership team has already operated out of Justin, Texas, since 2021. That is why most of the 137 positions to relocate will be headed to Oklahoma. Moreover, the company states that it is looking to fill some 150 additional positions “in the near future.”
Canoo won a deal with the US Postal Service at the beginning of the year. The latter has ordered six units of the Lifestyle Delivery Vehicle 190 (LD 190). In March, it took over significant parts of the production equipment of the insolvent British electric vehicle developer Arrival, which was shipped to Canoo’s production facilities in Oklahoma.
Canoo builds its Lifestyle Vehicle (LV) and its cargo variant, the Lifestyle Delivery Vehicle (LDV), at its plant in the US state of Oklahoma. The manufacturer acquired this plant at the end of 2022. The company also operates an assembly plant for battery modules in Pryor, around 240 kilometres north of the production site.
In November 2023, Canoo announced plans to ramp up production at its Oklahoma plant after receiving conditional funding for its vehicle and battery assembly plant a few months earlier. The state of Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation plan to provide up to $113 million in subsidies – provided Canoo meets its own investment and job creation goals. The manufacturer agreed to invest more than $320 million in the vehicle and battery assembly plant in Pryor to create more than 1,360 jobs.
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