Just a year after announcing their collaboration agreement, Hyundai and Canoo appear to have finally broken their commitment to sharing an electric platform for their electric cars. This is clear from the announcement made by the president of Canoo, Tony Aquila, during the shareholders’ meeting last Monday and which The Verge collects.
Aquila told his partners that “Canoo will now focus on the production and marketing of its own vehicles.” It should be remembered that the Californian start-up of electric cars currently has three models under development:
- A compact minivan for carsharing
- An electric van for company fleets (with a design very similar to the Tesla Cybertruck)
- A pick-up of 600 CV for individuals
Both companies have not formalized the end of the agreement. Nor have they commented on the information published by the prestigious American technology news website. Aquila’s words at the shareholders’ meeting, which was the first to be held as a publicly-traded company, are understood as a change of course for the young company. Canoo now prefers to work with its own cars than to do it for large manufacturers.
For now, all three Canoo models are in the development or prototype phase. Like the subscription-based “post-SUV” that the start-up introduced in early 2020 and intended to hit the market this year.
The company’s latest information about this compact-size electric minivan is that the prototype had already made its first tests and would go into production to be sold in a limited edition from 2022. Similar production and sales plans have the other two Canoo models. Both the electric van and the pick-up, the latter with an expected launch date in 2023.