American EV manufacturer Canoo has announced the resignation of two key employees and the temporary furlough of 30 factory workers at its Oklahoma City plant.
The beleaguered automaker was founded in 2017 as Evelozcity by Stefan Krause, a former Deutsche Bank CFO, and Ulrich Kranz, a former senior executive at BMW, after the two had met at EV maker Faraday Future. The company was renamed Canoo in February 2019 and introduced its first vehicle, the Canoo Lifestyle Vehicle, in September 2019. The Canoo Lifestyle Vehicle entered production in 2023.
CFO Greg Ethridge and General Counsel Hector Ruiz have both resigned from Canoo, the company announced in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ethridge has been replaced by Kunal Bhalla, who previously served as Chief of Staff to CEO Tony Aquila, while Associate General Counsel Sean Yan will replace Ruiz.
The latest departures came on the heels of the closure of Canoo’s original headquarters in Los Angeles, which the company said will allow it to prioritize its operations in Texas and Oklahoma.
The company also announced the furlough in Oklahoma for 12 weeks “as part of a broader realignment of its North American operations.”
The furloughed workers have been promised healthcare insurance coverage for the furlough period. “Our current leadership team is extending health coverage at the same level each furloughed employee had, at no cost to them, in recognition of their service to the company,” a Canoo spokesman said in a statement to Oklahoma City’s KFOR-TV.
The furloughed workers told KFOR that the factory hasn’t produced any vehicles for delivery, a claim the company disputed. “There has not been one single vehicle that has been wholeheartedly produced here in Oklahoma,” one worker said.
The Oklahoma plant achieved “final activation” as the first automotive foreign trade zone in the state of Oklahoma in mid-September, a move that allows the company to take advantage of free trade zone benefits.
During all of these corporate twists, Canoo did in fact manage to deliver three specially designed, electric crew transportation vehicles to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in July 2023. The vehicles can transport four astronauts in spacesuits, as well as necessary support personnel, and have additional room for specialized equipment. These vehicles are currently in use at the NASA spaceport for astronaut training, and are planned to be used to support the Artemis III mission that, it is hoped, will put astronauts on the moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Source: Canoo
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