Electric vehicle startup Canoo has announced it will merge with special purpose acquisition company Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp IV and go public on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol ‘CNOO’ before the end of the year.
With this announcement, Canoo is following in the footsteps of Nikola Motor and Fisker that have merged with so-called ‘blank check’ acquisition companies to go public. The merger values the combined company at $2.4 billion and will provide more than $600 million toward the development of Canoo’s electric vehicles.
Canoo was founded in 2017 by a pair of former BMW executives and plans to begin selling subscriptions to its all-electric van in early 2022, slightly behind initial plans that called for subscription sales to begin in late 2021. Bloomberg notes the company also wants to launch a sports sedan in 2025 while also selling electric delivery vans for commercial use from early 2023.
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“We have enough funding to go, from now, straight forward, laser focused to start up production and deliver our vehicles,” Canoo co-founder and chief executive Ulrich Kranz said in a statement.
Hennessy chairman and chief executive Daniel Hennessy added that the special purpose acquisition company looked at more than a dozen electric vehicle and advanced mobility companies before settling on Canoo. “It was clear to us that this company was truly world-class,” Hennessy commented.
Canoo unveiled its seven-seat electric van in September last year. It is underpinned by a modular platform and features a single, rear-mounted electric motor producing 300 hp and an 80 kWh battery pack. The same platform will be used for the aforementioned commercial van and the Canoo sports sedan.
