OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A former high-level Canoo employee, speaking exclusively to News 4, says he is not shocked the company, which received major financial support from the State of Oklahoma, furloughed all its employees and shuttered its Oklahoma production facilities on Wednesday.
In fact, he says, despite telling the public and its investors otherwise, the company never built any vehicles in Oklahoma at all.
In 2023, Governor Kevin Stitt and Oklahoma Department of Commerce leaders announced the State of Oklahoma had awarded Canoo, a start-up electric vehicle manufacturer, more than $100 million in state-funded incentives.
The plan was to pay out the incentives to Canoo over a 10-year period to help the company get off the ground.
In exchange, Canoo would manufacture its vehicles in Oklahoma, bringing the state jobs and potentially millions in tax revenue.
Canoo opened a battery manufacturing plant at the Mid-America Industrial Park in Pryor and a vehicle assembly in Oklahoma City.
“By the end of this year, we’ll bring about 120 jobs to this site,” Canoo’s CEO told News 4 when giving media a tour of the Oklahoma City facility in November 2023.
But despite what appeared to be a smooth-sailing start for the company, Canoo is now sinking.
In 2023, the company lost more than $300 million.
As of Wednesday, its stock price sits at just 13 cents a share.
In November, the company furloughed around 30 workers in Oklahoma City.
Then, on Wednesday, the company announced it had furloughed its 82 remaining workers in Oklahoma and would be "idling" its Oklahoma City and Pryor plants.
A former high-level Canoo employee who recently left the company within the past few months told News 4, none of these developments surprise him.
“I left voluntarily because I could see the writing on the wall,” said the employee, who asked News 4 to keep his identity anonymous.
The former employee spent several years with the company.
He told News 4 that Canoo’s management structure never made much logistical or financial sense to him.
“They hired too many, too quick, and paid too much,” the former employee said. “Everybody was a boss, and everybody wanted to be everybody's boss… everybody had a director title, so nobody's doing anything.”
He said each one of those numerous “directors” took home a six-figure salary.
In 2023, Canoo executives showed off the company’s Oklahoma City assembly plant, complete with high-tech, robotic assembly equipment.
“They have tons of equipment,” the former employee said. “It looks great. They have literally everything to run an entire assembly line for cars.”
Last December, Canoo proudly announced it had built its first three vehicles in the Oklahoma City plant, before selling them to the state.
The former employee told News 4 that “made in Oklahoma” announcement gave him a good laugh.
“I can tell you, those did not come off our assembly line,” the former employee said. “If you talk to any Canoo employee, they'll tell you those do not come off the assembly line.”
He says Canoo never paid the company that provided the software that the machines use to operate.
The former employee also says the company only ran the machines when showing them off to media or investors.
“The majority of those folks that were employed there, especially those hourly people, were just standing around twiddling their thumbs,” the former employee said.
In fact, he says when the state started putting pressure on the company to start production, a Canoo executive had workers from a separate Texas-based company he owned build those three vehicles.
"All those were handmade in Justin, Texas, by a totally separate company called AFV,” the former employee said. “They made them, they handmade them, and then they just brought them here. And most of them, they ended up just getting—like 90 percent of all the vehicles just got decals swapped out on them."
In September, Canoo announced it would boost Oklahoma’s workforce by relocating 140 of its highly paid engineers from Torrance, California, to Oklahoma.
“Most of these people, all they did was get Oklahoma addresses and turn them in and say they moved, but they never did,” the former employee said. “A lot of the engineers, some of the directors, things like that, they would just travel here every couple of weeks, spend a week here, go home for a week, and come back.
The employee said when it came to paying all those directors their six-figure salaries, or paying for anything for that matter, the company always leaned on its subsidy money from the State of Oklahoma.
He says the water really started getting rough for Canoo last year, when the state cut a $15 million dollar incentive promise in half after Canoo missed a key deadline.
"There were times when we would be told, ‘We're waiting on this money to come in,’” the former employee said. “Some of it was the Oklahoma money so that we could pay vendors real, and then, then that money wouldn't come in. They're like, ‘Well, we didn't get it, so we can't pay them.’"
News 4 reached out to Canoo on Wednesday.
A spokesperson said she would call and answer News 4’s questions.
She never did, instead only providing News 4 the following statement:
The company is in advanced discussions with various capital sources… We regret having to furlough our employees, especially during the holidays, but we have no choice at this point. We are hopeful that we will be able to bring them back to work soon.
Spokesperson for Canoo
News 4 reached out to Governor Stitt's office for comment. No one responded.
News 4 also reached out to the Oklahoma State Department of Commerce, which was in charge of facilitating some of the incentives the state promised Canoo.
A department spokesperson sent the following statement:
After finding out about Canoo’s decision to furlough employees and idle its Oklahoma City factory, we are taking steps to protect taxpayers, and if necessary, will explore avenues to claw back public dollars.
Spokesperson for Oklahoma State Department of Commerce
“I've never seen a single furloughed employee come back, and I don't know how they're going to dig themselves out of the hole with the way stock prices are right now,” the former employee said.
Looking back on his time with the company, the former employee says he can’t help but wonder: maybe Canoo only ever saw Oklahoma as its ATM?
“That's my tax money just kind of going down the drain,” he said.
