A Canoo electric vehicle upfitted for use by customers of van rental group Kingbee
Canoo Inc., which is relocating to Bentonville, has announced a 9,300-vehicle purchase order from van rental group Kingbee Rentals LLC of West Valley City, Utah, the third major deal for the electric vehicle maker since July.
The deal gives Kingbee the option to increase the order to 18,600 vehicles. Kingbee plans to upfit, wrap and deliver Canoo’s Lifestyle Delivery Vehicles as work-ready fleet vehicles for enterprise and small to medium-sized business clients. Vehicle features include 120 cubic feet of configurable cargo volume and an 80 kilowatt-hour battery pack.
The value of the agreement wasn’t immediately disclosed.
Kingbee provides a turn-key solution for fleet rental, delivering upfitted commercial vehicles with optional signage. The company has customers in 27 states. Scott Haslem, CEO of Kingbee, said Canoo provides “exactly what we need” to serve those customers.
“Our assets are our business and we need products that provide the best driver experience with durability,” Haslem said in a news release. “We’ve seen that small and medium businesses are looking for sustainable, affordable and flexible solutions that don’t tie up all of their cash, so this is a win-win for Kingbee.”
Kingbee’s clients include solar energy provider Sunrun of San Francisco, Nivo Solar of Houston, Blue Raven of Rogers, and the Utah Department of Health.
Canoo CEO Tony Aquila said the order is “another key milestone as we allocate production capacity for the coming years.”
The company last week announced an agreement for national fleet leasing provider Zeeba Co. Inc. of Los Angeles to purchase 5,450 vehicles. That followed a 4,500-vehicle purchase order for Walmart that was announced in July.
The deals come amid a rocky financial stretch for Canoo. The publicly traded company has reported widening losses and low cash, leading it to warn investors in May that there was “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
Aquila has taken a long-term approach to the company’s bottom line, favoring a “just in time, milestone-based” approach to accessing capital while growing the company’s sales pipeline.
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