The retail giant's InHome delivery business is slated to adopt these electric vans.
Canoo- Walmart and Canoo begin real-world tests of the electric LDV vans ahead of a wider rollout in 2023.
- Canoo and the retail giant have recently penned a deal for 4500 electric vans, destined for Walmart’s home delivery unit.
- The EV startup has gone through a number of changes in recent years and is now seen as prioritizing its commercial van lineup.
Canoo may have made a name for itself in the EV sphere by offering a futuristic vision of the van life, but its current endeavors don’t necessarily mirror a glamping experience. The EV startup has recently partnered with Walmart, letting the retailer use its Lifestyle Delivery Vehicles (LDVs) as part of its InHome delivery service, just a few weeks after penning an agreement with the retail giant to purchase 4500 of its vans with an option to purchase up to 10,000 vans total.
The company has already modified its LDV to Walmart’s specifications, each offering 120 cubic feet of cargo volume aimed at food and meal delivery. But the vans are otherwise based on Canoo’s initial delivery van design, which rides on a skateboard platform that incorporates the battery, motor, and leaf spring suspension. The LDV is designed for high frequency, last-mile deliveries but still offers a range of up to 250 miles—perhaps in excess of what its vans will cover in each 24-hour cycle.
At the moment, Walmart is testing the Canoo vans in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, ahead of the start of series deliveries in 2023.
“Our LDV has been engineered to enable a wide range of package deliveries, including refrigerated items, groceries, and general merchandise and do it efficiently, emission-free, and with a high level of driver comfort and ergonomics,” said Tony Aquila, investor, Chairman, and CEO of Canoo. “And we have been turning a lot of heads in the neighborhoods when driving by in our uniquely identifiable vehicles.”
Canoo is now one of several startups transitioning from a long period of development and investor cash accumulation to actual deliveries to retailers and logistics giants. And it’s certainly not alone in this segment, one that is finally seeing actual vans roll off the assembly line. The longer-term goal of such startups, aside from profitability at some point, is to capture market share and the displacement of so-called legacy automakers from the scene, just as major companies cite ambitions plans for battery-electric fleets of their own.
But the legacy automakers themselves are in this segment as well, including Ford, Mercedes-Benz (with eSprinter unit), and General Motors (with BrightDrop).
Canoo is perhaps unique in this field in that it did not start out pitching its van design solely to fleets for use as delivery vehicles. EV industry watchers will recall that Canoo, founded in 2017 as Evelozcity by two former Faraday Future execs, initially promised a lineup of lifestyle models that could feature interchangeable bodies, not necessarily commercial in nature, to be offered solely on a subscription basis.
Quite a lot has changed in the past five years—with a Hyundai partnership coming and going—but the latest iteration of Canoo’s vision of EV transportation is still built around a Volkswagen-style van model that can be reconfigured for different use cases. For now, Canoo intends to sell its vehicles directly to buyers in addition to offering them on a subscription basis—something that has yet to become commonplace in the auto industry.
Like others in the EV startup world, Canoo is rapidly approaching a moment of truth as production models begin to displace various working prototypes. The next 12 months should prove to be the most crucial for the company, with the order from Walmart being among the most serious developments in its short history.
Jay Ramey Jay Ramey grew up around very strange European cars, and instead of seeking out something reliable and comfortable for his own personal use he has been drawn to the more adventurous side of the dependability spectrum.
Keyword: Canoo Is Already Testing Its EV Vans with Walmart