American EV startup Canoo is at it again, fighting off the naysayers and possibly collection agencies by announcing yet another massive binding order for its Lifestyle Delivery Vehicle. Canoo’s latest order comes from work-ready rental van company Kingbee, who has already committed to purchasing 9,300 LDVs with the potential to double that order up to 18,600 units.

Canoo ($GOEV) is an LA-based EV startup founded in 2017 that continues to lay its own railroad tracks a car-length ahead of itself as its business chugs along the route toward production of its flagship EV, the Lifestyle Delivery Vehicle (LDV).

In the startup’s Q1 2022 report, it posted a $125M net loss alongside “substantial doubt” it could continue. To stay afloat, Canoo worked quickly to lean out its business strategy while continuing to test the LDV for road certification before scaled production and delivery of orders.

Since then, Walmart has signed a contract to order up to 10,000 LDVs beginning with prioritized deliveries in Q1 of 2023. Less than a month later however, Canoo’s Q2 report included another large net loss, leaving the startup even closer to bankruptcy. That being said, Canoo was still boasting over $1 billion is its sales pipeline (not entirely binding), and has been continuing to trudge forward into Q4.

Just last week, Canoo announced an order for over 5,000 LDVs from a relatively unknown company called Zeeba, half of which are binding purchases. Now, Canoo has followed up with a binding order nearly four times that, with the potential to be even larger than the Walmart purchase.

Kingbee Rentals could order up to 18,600 EVs from Canoo

Canoo announced its latest binding order in a press release today alongside some details of its new customer, Kingbee Rentals. Kingbee is a Utah-based work van rental company that specializes in commercial upfitting. It delivers its commercialized vans to customers in 27 states, offering month-to-month contracts.

Kingbee says it plans to take the 9,300 LDVs from the binding Canoo order and then upfit, wrap, and deliver them as work-ready fleets solutions for customers in enterprise and small and medium sized business (SMB). Kingbee CEO Scott Haslam spoke to the company’s order:

We are excited to partner with Canoo to provide sustainable work vehicle rentals to our customers. Canoo vehicles are designed specifically for fleets to be upfit and last multiple users. This is exactly what we need. Our assets are our business and we need products that provide the best driver experience with durability. 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. Providing a customized solution that handles well and has great ergonomics for the work vehicle industry. Between Canoo’s platform and Kingbee’s work-ready upfits, our flexible fleet leasing model will significantly reduce the barriers to entry for many fleets owners who think they have to purchase all of their vehicles. It’s even more exciting that it comes in a zero emissions package.

There’s no word yet on when Kingbee might start receiving EVs from its binding Canoo order, but we’d expect them to follow sometime after the prioritized Walmart order in early 2023 and possibly the aforementioned 2,500 units locked in by Zeeba last week. We should learn more during Canoo’s Q3 2022 earnings report, which should hopefully be made public soon.

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