Cano said Friday night that he had done just that “Operations will cease immediately,” after failing to secure sufficient funding to continue them. The writing was on the wall for electric vehicle startups before the announcement; The company has lost several executives in recent months, and told the Securities and Exchange Commission in November that it had just $700,000 in the bank, per .
In a press release announcing the application, Canoo said it was unable to obtain financing from the Department of Energy’s loan program office or from “foreign capital sources” with which executives were in talks. He added: “In light of the fact that these efforts were unsuccessful, the Board of Directors made the difficult decision to file for bankruptcy.” Canoo owes more than $164 million to hundreds of creditors, and has assets of about $126 million, according to TechCrunch. Under the application filed in Delaware, Canoo’s assets will be liquidated and the proceeds will be distributed to its creditors. “We are truly disappointed that things turned out the way they did,” Tony Aquila, the company’s CEO, said in a statement.
Canoo has built a few electric trucks for NASA and a prototype for the US Army, and has struck deals for larger fleets with the likes of USPS and Walmart, but only a small number of its trucks appear to have ever materialized.