NASA and USPS stop using Canoo EVs despite CEO’s pledged support

NASA and the United States Postal Service person stopped utilizing electrical vans made by now-bankrupt EV startup Canoo, contempt the erstwhile CEO’s assertion that helium would supply enactment for the vehicles.

NASA purchased 3 of Canoo’s EVs successful 2023 with the volition of utilizing the vans to shuttle astronauts to the launchpad for its Artemis missions to the Moon. The abstraction bureau told TechCrunch that Canoo “was nary longer capable to conscionable our ngo requirements.” As of October, NASA said it is leasing the Airstream-built “Astrovan” from Boeing that the aerospace institution commissioned for its ain crewed abstraction missions.

Meanwhile, the USPS said successful an emailed connection the six vehicles it purchased “for valuation purposes” successful 2024 “are nary longer successful use.” The “evaluation has been completed,” the postal work wrote, and “no further investments are anticipated.” The USPS declined to stock immoderate details oregon last results of the evaluation.

Canoo besides provided astatine slightest 1 objection conveyance to the Department of Defense (DOD) earlier its bankruptcy. The DOD did not respond to emailed requests astir whether it has continued utilizing the van.

Canoo filed for bankruptcy successful January 2025 aft years of fiscal struggles and failing to found a marketplace for its electrical vans. Soon after, erstwhile CEO Tony Aquila made a $4 cardinal bid for the startup’s assets successful March. Aquila told the bankruptcy trustee that a “principal motivation” for buying the assets was his “desire to grant [Canoo’s] committedness to supply work and enactment for definite authorities programs.”

NASA and the USPS declined to stock whether Aquila ever approached either bureau astir supporting the vehicles. Aquila did not respond to a petition for comment. A lawyer who represented Aquila successful the bankruptcy proceedings besides did not respond.

The bankruptcy justice approved the merchantability to Aquila successful April. He was not the lone entity funny successful buying the company’s assets, though.

As galore arsenic 8 parties signed NDAs to measure Canoo’s intelligence property, prototypes, and equipment, the bankruptcy trustee said astatine the time. A lawyer for Canoo said a fistful of those parties came adjacent to making a bid. One was Harbinger, a California-based electrical trucking institution that was created by erstwhile Canoo employees successful 2021. Another was a mysterious financier from the U.K. named Charles Garson.

Harbinger, astatine the time, had accused Canoo of hiding assets from the merchantability process. It besides claimed the bankruptcy trustee had “unfairly favored Mr. Aquila” by accepting his connection without wide selling the bankrupt company’s assets. Garson claimed to beryllium consenting to wage arsenic overmuch arsenic $20 cardinal for Canoo’s assets, but the justice yet decided the capitalist did not formalize his bid successful time.

The trustee and lawyers for Canoo argued that Aquila presented the champion and astir steadfast bid. They besides claimed 1 of the different imaginable bidders — though they ne'er specified who — could person raised concerns with the Committee connected Foreign Investment successful the United States due to the fact that of its “foreign ownership.” Lawyers for Aquila and Canoo flagged this arsenic a peculiar occupation successful airy of the contracts with NASA, the USPS, and the DOD. Harbinger and Garson declined to comment.