Electric vehicle startup Canoo has placed its remaining employees and what it calls a “mandatory unpaid break” through at least the end of the year, TechCrunch reports.
The report cites an email sent to employees, which said they would be locked out of Canoo’s systems at the end of the day Friday, and that benefits would last through the end of December.
This comes just a few days after Canoo announced that it was furloughing 82 employees and idling an assembly facility in Oklahoma due to lack of funding, TechCrunch notes. That facility hasn’t ramped up production; so far Canoo has only delivered small numbers of demonstration vehicles, including some for the U.S. Postal Service.
Canoo also earlier this year closed the Los Angeles office that originally served as its headquarters. In August the startup announced a move to Justin, Texas, where it’s maintained a corporate office since CEO Tony Aquila took over a few years ago.
Canoo has lost many executives, including its CTO, CFO, and general counsel, meaning most of the original contingent that launched the startup in 2017 is now gone. That’s coincided with a change in direction under current CEO Aquila, who pivoted Canoo from its original plan of selling van-like EVs on a subscription basis toward commercial vehicles.
That pivot as attracted interest from Walmart and fleet-management company Zeeba, which announced orders for 4,500 and 3,000 Canoo electric vans, respectively, in 2022. In addition to the Postal Service, Canoo has also provided a handful of vans to NASA and an electric pickup truck prototype to the U.S. Army. But the startup hasn’t been able to convert this hype into revenue by ramping up vehicle production.