OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Some furloughed and former Canoo employees are raising more concerns this week, this time having to do with Canoo’s CEO and a separate company he owned, which they say never paid Canoo back millions of dollars it owed the electric vehicle manufacturer for making upgrades to a warehouse.
A Canoo spokesperson denied the other company failed to pay Canoo back.
News 4 reported last month when electric vehicle manufacturer Canoo—a publicly traded company— announced it had furloughed its remaining workers in Oklahoma and would be “idling” its two plants in the state.
A high-level Canoo furloughed employee, who worked in Canoo’s Oklahoma City manufacturing plant, told News 4 Canoo’s CEO also owned a Texas-based company, which Canoo was renting the warehouse from.
The furloughed employee says that company owed Canoo millions of dollars, but never paid it back.
In an exclusive interview with News 4, the furloughed employee—who asked News 4 not to share his identity—says he and other have questions surrounding the connections between the two companies, and Canoo’s CEO.
The furloughed employee reflected on his time working in Canoo’s warehouse, off I-40 in Oklahoma City.
“You know, there was there was a lot of great days in there,” the furloughed employee said.
He remembers all and his colleagues accomplished —
“I watched them do integration and start building the captain lines,” he said. “I was strongly under the belief that we were moments away from pumping vehicles out of the doors.”
— All for it to come to an abrupt end, with this furloughed Canoo employee now having nothing to show for it.
“And we still fall short,” the furloughed employee said. “If you had asked me that we would end up where we are today, there's no possible way that I could have ever foreseen that.”
The furloughed employee spent the bulk of his time at Canoo’s warehouse in Oklahoma City.
It was supposed to be home Canoo’s state-of the art factory, used to assemble its electric vehicles.
A different, former Canoo employee News 4 spoke with says he helped Canoo leaders scout the site.
“I did the walk through on that before we ever purchased it,” the former employee told News 4.
He says there’s a bit of a caveat: Canoo didn’t technically make the purchase, and didn’t ever own the building at all.
“Tony has a separate company,” the former Canoo employee said. “They're the company that actually owns the building, and Canoo rents from them.”
“Tony”—is Tony Aquila, Canoo’s CEO.
In addition to Canoo, Aquila owns another Texas-based company, called ‘AFV Partners.’
“Aquila Family Ventures,” the furloughed Canoo employee said. “It's a property management company.”
News 4 obtained a copy of the lease Canoo signed in 2023 to rent the warehouse.
It shows Canoo leased the building from a company called ‘I-40 OKC Partners, LLC.’
According to a 2023 Canoo press release, I-40 OKC Partners, LLC. Is “an affiliate” of AFV.
“So AFV is the property owners of the building,” the furloughed employee said.
The furloughed employee told News 4, a man who worked as the property manager for Canoo’s Oklahoma City warehouse was an AFV employee, but drew his salary from Canoo’s payroll.
“He works for AFV, but he has a Canoo paycheck,” the furloughed employee said. “So he basically is on Canoo payroll.”
The furloughed Canoo employee told news 4 the Oklahoma City building was pretty much an empty shell when Canoo leased it — in need of a lot of work.
“Let's just talk about the amount of electricity needed to run a manufacturing facility,” the furloughed employee said. “When Canoo moved into that facility, there was no way that they were going to run automation with the amount of electric available that they had.”
It’s why, the furloughed employee says, the lease included a clause, in which AFV promised to pay Canoo millions of dollars in “tenant improvement funds” to fix the place up.
He says Canoo workers got hard to work doing just that.
“The maintenance team — I watched them work six, seven days a week from May ‘til September, 10 to 12 hour days, putting in all these structures and saving the company millions of dollars by integrating everything in-house,” the furloughed employee said. “I witnessed the entire maintenance team install the general assembly line, which, you know, basically is the entire line that builds the skateboards out once the frame is built.”
He says—right now—the facility has everything in place, ready to start pumping out cars.
“If they had the money for parts and they had the money for labor, they could absolutely build vehicles,” he said.
The ‘money’ part is where things start to get complicated.
The furloughed employee said, when the time came for AFV — the company owned by Canoo’s own CEO — to pay Canoo back the millions of dollars for upgrading the building —
“Well, they never paid that money back,” he said.
It was a move the furloughed employee says didn’t make much sense.
“You would think that you'd want those two partners to get along and to work together,” he said.
Lately, he thinks a lot about his colleagues
“I feel like there was a lot of honest people, and there are a lot of people that cared,” the furloughed employee said.
All that hard work they put in.
“There was a lot of us that put our heart and soul into it,” he said. “A lot of us that obviously invested our own money into it, not just in stocks, but to keep the place going.”
Only to come out with nothing.
“I'm just praying for all the people that were furloughed and that they, you know, find something, something else,” he said.
He also thinks a lot about Canoo’s leaders, and what they’ll come out with.
People like CEO Tony Aquila.
“My guess is, is he files bankruptcy and everything that's under the roof goes to AFV, which is a company that he owns, and he owns everything afterwards,” the furloughed employee said.
He thinks about AFV’s apparent decision to not pay Canoo back.
“We borrowed from Peter to pay Paul,” he said.
He thinks, maybe, things could’ve been different.
“Had they paid that money back, maybe we'd all still be there,” he said. “I don't know.”
News 4 reached out to Canoo’s spokesperson Monday and asked if the company or its leadership had anything they want to share with News 4 in response to all of these concerns.
A Canoo spokesperson responded with a statement after News 4's publishing deadline on Monday night, denying AFV's affiliate company failed to pay back Canoo for the warehouse upgrades.
“This is false," the Canoo spokesperson said. "I-40 OKC Partners LLC has repaid to Canoo all amounts due for improvements made and services provided to the Oklahoma facility. We can confirm the employee referred to was a prior employee of AFV OKC Management LLC and is currently employed by Canoo.”
News 4 asked the spokesperson to confirm the exact amount I-40 OKC Partners paid Canoo, and the date they paid Canoo.
The spokesperson has not responded as of publishing on Monday.
