Apple held meetings in the first half of 2020 with the California EV startup Canoo as part of the Silicon Valley giant’s mysterious effort to promote its own electric vehicle project, three people familiar with the talks said. The edge. According to two of the people, the two companies discussed options ranging from investment to an acquisition.
According to the people, Canoo’s scalable electric vehicle platform, or ‘skateboard’, is largely of interest to Apple. The platform differs from those developed by other new ventures and larger car manufacturers because it integrates more of the electronics of the car, allowing greater flexibility in the design of the cabin. It also features steer-by-wire technology, which also increases the flexibility of the design and is not yet widely used in the industry.
Canoo was more interested in an investment from Apple, two of the people said. Eventually the conversations fall apart. Canoo has since become an exchange-traded company after merging with an empty check fund listed on the NASDAQ at the end of 2020. Apple has made at least one other acquisition in the mobility space over the past few years and bought Drive.ai in 2019.
“Canoo does not openly comment on strategic discussions, relationships or partnerships unless deemed appropriate,” Tony Aquila, CEO of Canoo, said in a statement to The edge. Apple declined to comment.
The news about Apple’s interest in Canoo comes as Reuters reports that the technology company is already negotiating with Hyundai in 2024 to make a self-driving electric vehicle. Apple’s vehicle project, codenamed “Project Titan”, has changed several times over the years. However, the company has reportedly refocused on manufacturing an autonomous electric vehicle and has held meetings with small manufacturers like Canoo and as large as Hyundai as it seems to outsource things like technical design and manufacturing.
Hyundai and Canoo had earlier announced a plan to develop electric vehicles together in February 2020, although the project apparently does not relate to the talks with Apple. Canoo refers to its partnership with Hyundai that was recently submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission as an ‘engineering services agreement’ that will allow the companies to develop a platform to power an electric vehicle in small segments. ‘But Canoo did not disclose whether it had been paid for the Hyundai deal, and whether any work had begun.
Canoo was founded in late 2017 by a small group that has separated from the struggling EV startup Faraday Future, including several former BMW drivers. As The edge first reported, the effort was funded by a Chinese investor who is the son-in-law of a former CCP leader, and the family in charge of Taiwanese technology company TPK, which supplies touch screen technology to Apple. Canoo plans to make commercial electric vehicles, such as delivery vehicles or food trucks, as well as a consumer-oriented van that will be sold on a subscription basis. All of Canoo’s vehicles are powered by the same scalable skateboard technology.
The talks with Apple took place at an important time for Canoo, which lost $ 182.3 million in 2019 while working on its first prototype vehicle and entered the bank with just $ 29 million in 2020, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Canoo had meetings in 2019 and 2020 with various companies from Silicon Valley, China and elsewhere. But as transactions could not materialize, the startup needed money in the short term. A $ 7 million loan was taken from the government’s salary protection pandemic program and, as talks with Apple continue, in March 2020 another $ 15 million total from Pak Tam Li (the Chinese investor ) and the Chiang family (the owners of TPK). after the SEC filing.
Canoo finally partnered later that year with the empty check fund, Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp. IV, start negotiations. It was one of the first companies to jump on this trend to use a so-called “special-purpose procurement company” to shorten the traditional path to public trading. While the deal was being worked out, the Chiang family poured another $ 80 million into the startup, and the soon-to-be executive invested $ 35 million, according to the SEC filing. Canoo raised about $ 600 million when the deal was closed by the end of 2020.
While Canoo now has the money it was looking for at the beginning of 2020, it has not softened its ambitions to work with big companies like Apple. The startup said in the same SEC filing that it “is currently in talks with several other participants in the blue-chip industry who are interested in leveraging Canoo’s technology and engineering expertise for their own commercial products.”