Dive Brief:
- Electric vehicle maker Canoo will purchase a vehicle manufacturing facility in Oklahoma City to produce passenger and delivery vehicles, the company announced last week.
- The existing 630,000-square-foot site will be outfitted for a full vehicle assembly line with robotics, a paint shop and upfitting center to customize existing vehicles, producing up to 20,000 EVs per year by the end of 2023.
- In a statement, Chairman and CEO Tony Aquila noted that the location of the new facility offers several advantages. This includes “significant room for expansion” and large-scale production, as well as Oklahoma City’s established transportation system, including rail.
Dive Insight:
Canoo’s new Oklahoma facility expands its manufacturing footprint as it prepares to scale EV production in 2023.
“We are working with our third-party manufacturing partners to achieve [start of production] on our own equipment this month,” Aquila said. The CEO added that the company will “aggressively” shift all of its equipment into the new site during the first half of 2023, with an upscale of production in the second half.
The facility follows Canoo’s announcement earlier this month that it will build an EV battery module manufacturing facility in a 9,000-acre industrial park near Tulsa, Oklahoma, that will also house the company’s mega-micro facility, slated to open next year. The newly announced vehicle production site will also help ramp initial vehicle production.
In February, Oklahoma awarded Canoo $15 million from its “Quick Action Closing Fund,” an incentive program established to attract businesses to the state. The EV maker received $5 million for R&D, and $10 million for manufacturing. Oklahoma also agreed to purchase 1,000 vehicles for the state, Aquila said on a February 2022 earnings call.
State incentive packages have played a role when EV makers have weighed where to locate their manufacturing operations. Ohio and Georgia are among states offering a host of incentives specific to EV infrastructure including charging. Rivian is set to receive $1.5 million in incentives and tax credits from Georgia to locate its EV production facility in East Augusta.
