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Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
Royal Mail, the UK’s largest electric fleet operator with 5,000 electric vans, has begun piloting electric delivery vehicles from Canoo, the Texas-based EV startup.
The pilots with the British postal company began earlier this month as Royal Mail aims to further electrify its fleet of over 43,000 delivery vehicles.
The company announced in July that it would add 2,100 new electric vans to its fleet over the next year, increasing the total by almost half to more than 7,000. Two weeks ago, the Stellantis-owned brand Peugeot revealed that it will supply the vehicles, including over 1,000 British-built E-PARTNERs.
The Stellantis brand has supplied Royal Mail with vehicles since 2009, and electric vans since 2014.
The company aims for 100% of its delivery vehicles to be zero-emission by 2035 and 100% of its company cars to be zero-emission by 2030, supporting its ambition to achieve Net Zero by 2040.
Last month, Canoo said it received Individual Vehicle Approval (IVA) regulatory certification in the UK, confirming that its right-hand drive electric commercial vans meet the national technical requirements.
In September, Canoo’s former CFO Greg Ethridge revealed in a webinar that the company expects “to have vehicles” in the UK and “pilot with them by the end of the year”.
The EV maker is expanding its operations to the United Kingdom and has recently established a customer and activation center in Bicester Motion.
Greg Ethridge, the company’s former CFO, has recently noted that the pilots do not require a big investment they allow the company to start “building relationships with the largest fleets in these markets”.
Tony Aquila, the chief executive, highlighted the UK’s “high-potential market that provides incentives including the plug-in van grant (PIVG)”.
“We’ve been able to enter into two very respectable and supportive markets, the UK and Saudi Arabia,” the CFO stated before saying that Canno is focused on large commercial fleets such as USPS and Walmart.
Shares of electric vehicle maker Canoo rose 33% on Monday and surged another 10% in Tuesday’s pre-market trading session to $0.77.
Walmart has opted to integrate Chevrolet BrightDrop 400 electric vans into its last-mile delivery fleet, deviating from an agreement from 2022 with electric vehicle maker Canoo to purchase thousands of Canoo’s electric delivery vehicles.
In July 2022, Walmart announced a definitive agreement with Canoo to acquire 4,500 of its all-electric Lifestyle Delivery Vehicles (LDVs), with an option to increase the order to 10,000 units.
Since the record low reached on November 4, the stock has surged 52%.
The stock reached a new record low last week at $0.37 after the company announced that it is furloughing 30 factory workers in its Oklahoma plant until late January next year as a timeline for mass production start remains unknown.
Last week, the startup announced it entered into a $12 million secured revolving credit facility with AFV Management Advisors, LLC, an entity founded by the company’s CEO.
Two years ago, in November 2022, Canoo said it had acquired $2 billion in customer orders claiming they were ready for the start of production set for later that month.
Canoo first cautioned investors in 2022 that it had “substantial doubt” about continuing as a going concern and has since been raising capital to support production.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
