Canoo electric truck

[Luke42]

I just don't see how this company survives on its own without some other major player coming in that helps with volume and service. Like a government contract, amazon, apple, or a legacy auto. Thoughts?

Scaling up a capital intensive low-margin business like car manufacturing is a Hard Problem.

The conventional mass-market car business is one where you spend a billion dollars upfront to develop a platform and build the factories, and then you make it back a few thousand dollars at a time amortized over hundreds of thousands of units. That's a big bet with a low payoff, and not many people will take that bet without a *lot* of assurance that they'll get their money back.

Tesla has managed to pull it off, but they're the only one whose managed to thread that needle in a century -- and Musk has had to bet the company on each successive product in a way that legacy car makers would likely consider to be "batshit crazy".

One way to make it less hard is to use contract manufacturing from existing Tier 1 automotive suppliers, or an existing car company -- but someone still has to make a billion dollar bet. The only billionaire I know who's batshit crazy enough to do that is already the CEO of Tesla.

Even existing car companies have trouble selling cars in the US. For instance, Mahindra & Mahindra (who got their start making licensed Jeeps) has been trying to introduce their pickup trucks and SUVs into the US market for at least 15 years, and they're already a car company. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahindra_&_Mahindra#Mahindra_in_North_America
Introducing a new car brand is a tough nut to crack.

Mad props to everyone who wants to give it a go. I'm cheering all the way!

 

[rr6013]

I like it. Did they say if they were going to sell it or if it was subscription based?

I just don't see how this company survives on its own without some other major player coming in that helps with volume and service. Like a government contract, amazon, apple, or a legacy auto. Thoughts?

It’s a vaporware.

HELL, Tesla just had to “tech advisor” 4th largest nickel producer to band aid its supply chain. GoldmanSacks or some other WallSt. house can’t bring Canoo to market.

At best, Canoo survives D2C build your own, fleet sales and hopes for a miracle

 

[Jow]

this one is easy, it’s Corvair pickup inspired. love it.

 

[Diehard]

More videos:

 

[Newton]

thats really cool, i hope they make some but if small scale i would assume the cost would have to be high... but it looks like it should be cheap

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

Meh, It's just an electric Pinzgauer. What's old is new againl

I had a neighbor rehabilitating a Pinzgauer (after Thor) and I really liked it. The boxiness shows through in the Canoo but it would be hard to beat the ruggedness of these trucks. As for the Canoo, I am married to the stainless steel exoskeleton and 500+ mile range. Anyone else does this and I might take a look.

 

[MEDICALJMP]

It has some interesting features like drive/brake by wire. Interesting concept. It’s cool, but no Cybertruck.

 

[Quicksilver]

I've driven a lot of cab overs (Commercial vehicles) and cab forwards (military HEMMET) and I own a cab forward Pierce firetruck.
There is a learning curve until you get used to turning them.
Most of them rode like an oxcart due to sitting above the engine and back in the day there was no air ride suspension.
Another drawback is all the weight is up front and running empty on slick roads can be a challenge. I would assume that the battery pack would solve that problem due to placement and low center of gravity.
The other drawback is that in an accident you are the first one at the scene of the crash.
I'm not going to hold my breath that this will ever get built or be a serious threat to the CT.

 

[Crissa]

I'm not going to hold my breath that this will ever get built or be a serious threat to the CT.

It's no threat, because it targets another demographic. The production date is off in the future, too, so there will be hundreds of thousands of Cybertrucks on the road by then.

I might swap out my Cybertruck for something like this with a smaller footprint... But I'm not swapping my reservation! I want my truck now.

-Crissa

 

[azjohn]

I've driven a lot of cab overs (Commercial vehicles) and cab forwards (military HEMMET) and I own a cab forward Pierce firetruck.
There is a learning curve until you get used to turning them.
Most of them rode like an oxcart due to sitting above the engine and back in the day there was no air ride suspension.
Another drawback is all the weight is up front and running empty on slick roads can be a challenge. I would assume that the battery pack would solve that problem due to placement and low center of gravity.
The other drawback is that in an accident you are the first one at the scene of the crash.
I'm not going to hold my breath that this will ever get built or be a serious threat to the CT.

I used to drive a 40 ft bus, can relate to the cab forward takes a little getting used to, but once you have it is amazing the difference it makes in turning radius

 

[MEDICALJMP]

Canoo's New Pickup Truck Is The Anti-Cybertruck Because It May Actually Be A Useful Truck

Jason Torchinsky
Thursday 11:51AM
March 11, 2021
https://jalopnik.com/canoos-new-pickup-truck-is-the-anti-cybertruck-because-1846455337

I’ve been covering startup EV maker Canoo for a few years here, and I’ve been continually impressed with its very straightforward rounded-box-on-wheels approach to design. It has been great at maximizing interior volume and creating what have resembled modernized electric Volkswagen Type 2 Transporters, even before VW began to do the same. Now Canoo is showing an electric pickup truck with such a brilliantly useful design that I can’t help but think of it in terms of its opposite, Tesla’s Cybertruck, which has a radical design, too.

The difference is that the Cybertruck design seems to be one of a truck that would be great at hauling massive loads of ego and dogecoin, and that’s about it, while this Canoo design actually seems like a truck capable of doing real, useful work.



Looking at the Cybertruck, all I can see is so many sharp corners to jam my body into, a short bed with extremely high sides that would be hell to load, bad visibility, minimal tie-down points and a lot of wasted space at the front.

I think part of the reason why Canoo has found such a flexible and utilitarian design is because it didn’t really come up with it. Say what we will about the Cybertruck, but it is an all-new, novel design. But that doesn’t mean it makes any sense at all for a truck a human intends to use to, you know, truck things.


While lots of sites are calling the truck “oddly shaped” or “bubbly,” the truth is that the design is actually an adaptation of a very tried-and-true pickup design method.

The Canoo design is very much a modern take on the old cab-forward or forward control truck design, where the driver’s cab is situated over or very near the front wheels, and the hood is eliminated, with the engine either under the bed behind the cab somewhere or in a “doghouse” inside the cab.

There are plenty of well-known examples of this approach, with famous ones from Volkswagen, Ford, Jeep, Dodge, Fiat, GM and many more:


It’s just a smart design, because it doesn’t waste any of the car’s overall length with a hood, and can instead give that room to the bed or more cab volume. This kind of truck design also lends itself to useful utilitarian design features, like cargo bed sides that fold down, storage lockers under the bed and those sorts of things.

This is not a truck design for showy trucks; this is a workhorse design, as you can see by looking at any number of fleet-owned worker trucks all over the world, like this one, for example:

Canoo has really leaned into the Swiss Army knife utility of the thing and provided its truck with all kinds of compartments and fold-out things, all of which feel pretty damn useful to me. Here, let’s look at some of these details:

If you’re using your pickup to do work that requires tools, a locking toolbox is key — you’ve seen plenty of those add-on diamond-plate, in-bed toolboxes, right? Those eat up space in the bed, but an integrated one like what Canoo has on the front is a great idea. Plus, I like how the designers made the drop-down lid fold out into a workbench/table thing.

That’s useful! It’s a great design, and I would use the crap out of something like that. You could cut wood on it, eat on it, look at/draw plans on it — it’s great.

Plus, look — there’s six 110V outlets there so you can plug in your drill or circular saw or hibachi or whatever.

I’m guessing that because of the ride height and the size of the battery below the bed, these flip-down sides aren’t quite tall enough to qualify as drop-down sides for real loading, so Canoo is calling these “flip-down side tables.”

I bet they could still be helpful for loading things in from the side, and more work surfaces are never a bad idea.

Canoo is doing some interesting things with the bed, too. There are dividers and tie-downs, which can be handy; there’s LED lighting above and on the perimeter of the bed. But most exciting, there’s a nice system to extend the bed via a split tailgate and a slide-out bed floor extender.

The inside edges of the split tailgate have redundant taillight units in them, too, to compensate for hiding the normal ones, which is a smart touch. This has the advantage over just extending a bed by leaving the tailgate down in that you still retain bed sides in the extended bit.

I admire Canoo’s commitment to using every possible bit of empty volume in the truck, which there must have been a pocket of in front of the rear axle, allowing them to add this handy little slide-out drawer/step.

When it comes to a truck, I don’t think you can ever have too many places to stash stuff, or steps to get up to the bed. Usually on the sides of a truck I find myself stepping on tires to get over the sides, but this would be way better.


Canoo also shows this cool-looking camper shell with a roof tent setup, though I can’t quite tell from the copy if the company is planning to produce it or if it’s just a concept for what an aftermarket shell could be.

Canoo says these will be available in dual or single motor configurations, with the dual-motor setup making 600 horsepower and 550 pound-feet of torque, which should be plenty. They also claim “200+ miles” of battery range, and a payload capacity of 1800 pounds.

The overall length is about the exact same as a 1995 Ford Ranger — 184 inches — which is an entirely rational length for a pickup truck.

Of course, it’s not out yet, so we have to take all of these specs with a grain of salt until we can verify them, empirically.


Canoo says it’ll be taking pre-orders in the second quarter of this year, with deliveries “as early as 2023,” so who knows exactly what that means. Price does not seem to have been set at this time, either.

In terms of raw utility for an electric truck, the Canoo pickup seems well-matched against the Bollinger entry, or the Rivian R1T and both of those seem vastly more usable than the Cybertruck. There’s also the Hummer EV, which is, of all of them, the most like a conventional modern pickup truck in design.

None of these five trucks is actually in real production just yet (Rivian seems close), though, so I guess we’ll have to see what actually makes it to reality.

I’ll admit, though, I’m a sucker for a good forward-control truck design, and this one sure hits all the right weird-but-useful truck buttons for me.

I hope Canoo actually builds it! Too bad it’s almost certain to be way, way too expensive. But one can hope, irrationally.


————————————————-

Guessing I need to buy some Dogecoin so I have something to carry in my Cybertruck besides my massively over-inflated ego.
Sheesh.

Hard to find an alternative article on EVs that don’t try to knock Tesla down. So far there is no pricing estimate. Is this going to be another 6 figure plus truck that will likely never see off road or a 4x8 sheet of plywood? Or is it more vapor ware? Watching the reveal video I wondered why they kept the stage do dark.Made me wonder what they were hiding. While not illuminate the inside of the cab? Show me how special it is instead of saying it is great. They did show a mock of the dash, but it wasn’t that revealing. I saw more in GMs mock up of the EV Hummer.

 

[Eye of Elon]

If i was going to design an electric truck, it would look like this, only bigger. No pointlessly wasted space up front.

 

[FutureBoy]

I actually like the various tricks of the Canoo pickup truck. Especially the bed extension. None of it looks unbreakable though. And with all those in-bed ridges and holes the crowd wanting to haul sand will not be happy. Plus, this truck is not going to be off-roading. Maybe a drive along a pasture dirt road or a building site. Overall it looks to me like a pickup that an expensive architect would drive. Sure it’s useful for bringing some materials to a job site but mostly it’s for using as a mobile office when directing the blue collar crowd. I wouldn’t expect the occupant to step out in muddy overalls and boots. Instead, I see someone in casual Friday clothing, with a bright clean hard hat that must be retrieved when reminded to wear it.

But I hope it gets built. And sells a respectable number. And if I find one out in the wilds off the road, I’ll stop my CT and help get them back on the road. Probably will require a tow back to pavement.

 

[Idaho_7]

I actually like the various tricks of the Canoo pickup truck. Especially the bed extension. None of it looks unbreakable though. And with all those in-bed ridges and holes the crowd wanting to haul sand will not be happy. Plus, this truck is not going to be off-roading. Maybe a drive along a pasture dirt road or a building site. Overall it looks to me like a pickup that an expensive architect would drive. Sure it’s useful for bringing some materials to a job site but mostly it’s for using as a mobile office when directing the blue collar crowd. I wouldn’t expect the occupant to step out in muddy overalls and boots. Instead, I see someone in casual Friday clothing, with a bright clean hard hat that must be retrieved when reminded to wear it.

But I hope it gets built. And sells a respectable number. And if I find one out in the wilds off the road, I’ll stop my CT and help get them back on the road. Probably will require a tow back to pavement.

A lot of good points FutureBoy, There may be another problem with the "Subscription" only allocations. A vehicle that has the durability to last many years should be bought and held so that it can be modified for work or play and a one time investment like a refrigerator or washing machine. Why would anyone, other than a few exceptions, want to pay "Rent-To-Own" prices for years and years?

 

[Dids]

I like it a lot! I had imagined the CT with a more cab forward design. I like the flexible design but worry that it adds complexity (cost and failure).
I don't like the bed getting narrow at the tailgate. I curse the small lip my tacoma has every time I want to pull a load of branches off.