NASA and the United States Postal Service have stopped using electric trucks made by now-bankrupt EV startup Canoo, despite claims by its former CEO that it would provide support for the vehicles.
NASA purchased three of Canoo’s electric vehicles in 2023 with the intention of using the trucks to transport astronauts to the launch site for the Artemis missions to the moon. The space agency told TechCrunch that Canoo was “no longer able to meet the demands of our mission.” As of October, NASA said it is leasing the Airstream-built Astrovan from Boeing that the aerospace company commissioned for its own crewed space missions.
Meanwhile, the USPS said in an emailed statement that the six vehicles it bought “for evaluation purposes” in 2024 “are no longer in use.” “The evaluation is complete,” the postal service wrote, and “no further investment is anticipated.” The USPS declined to share details or final results of the evaluation.
Canoo also provided at least one demonstration vehicle to the Department of Defense (DOD) prior to bankruptcy. The DOD did not respond to emailed requests about whether it continued to use the truck.
Canoo filed for bankruptcy in January 2025 after years of financial struggles and failure to create a market for its electric trucks. Soon after, former CEO Tony Aquila made a $4 million bid for the startup’s assets in March. Aquila told the bankruptcy trustee that a “primary motivation” for buying the assets was his “desire to honor [Canoo’s] commitment to provide services and support for certain government programs’.
NASA and the USPS declined to share whether Aquila ever approached either agency about supporting the vehicles. Aquila did not respond to a request for comment. An attorney representing Aquila in the bankruptcy proceeding also did not respond.
A bankruptcy judge approved the sale to Aquila in April. However, it was not the only entity interested in buying the company’s assets.
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As many as eight parties signed NDAs to evaluate Canoo’s intellectual property, prototypes and equipment, the bankruptcy trustee said at the time. A lawyer for Canoo said a handful of those parties came close to bidding. One was Harbinger, a California-based electric truck company created by former Canoo employees in 2021. The other was a mysterious financier from the UK named Charles Garson.
Harbinger, at the time, had accused Canoo of withholding assets from the sale process. He also claimed that the bankruptcy trustee had “unfairly favored Mr. Aquila” by accepting his offer without widely soaking up the bankrupt company’s assets. Garson claimed he was willing to pay up to $20 million for Canoo’s assets, but the judge ultimately ruled that the investor did not formalize his offer in time.
Canoo’s administrator and lawyers argued that Aquila presented the best and most stable offer. They also claimed one of the other potential bidders – although they never specified who – could have raised concerns with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States because of its “foreign ownership”. Attorneys for Aquila and Canoo pointed to this as a particular problem in light of contracts with NASA, the USPS and the DOD. Harbinger and Garson declined to comment.
