Canoo has signed up to exhibit at the up coming Great British Fleet Event, to be held on Wednesday April 17th, from 9am to 4pm at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes, England.
The hosts promise a sociable day featuring a packed line-up of thought-provoking seminar sessions, interactive exhibition section and extensive networking opportunities – bringing fleet decision makers and suppliers together.
We reached out the staff at GBFE and they confirmed that Canoo is expected to have two vehicles on display set up alongside other OEMs such as Ford and BMW.
In the exhibitor information section, Canoo touts their ability to allow operators to monitor and manage their fleets end-to-end without the need for additional hardware or software. They also share an e-mail address of UKFleets@canoo.com which indicates this certainly isn't a one off and Canoo does intend to expand into the United Kingdom market much sooner than anyone following their story would have assumed.
Canoo needs money to really get started with production, but apparently can't get that money without making the vehicles. But just making the vehicles isn't enough; look at the current state of Fisker having rushed into production. They managed to produce over 10,000 units in 2023 and yet just this week they were forced to delist from the NYSE and slash their prices to try and unload inventory to avoid bankruptcy.
In contrast to Fisker, Canoo hasn't been focused on hitting any particular metric in terms of volume, rather they've been slow rolling into production getting things ready although it does appear some vehicles are being built while that process happens.
So It's a bit of an oddity that Canoo should spend precious resources on a yet another foreign market while struggling to even get started up at home. We thought the same thing when Canoo announced their relationship with GCC Olayan last year, however, perhaps the latest Strategic Foreign Investor is based in the U.K. and is a driving force behind the decision.
Whatever the reasons may be, its undeniable that the platform is perfect for the U.K. and there are obvious opportunities and huge potential that go along with planting seeds in fertile grounds. They've already been putting in the work to develop a Right Hand Drive system to sell vehicles to the US Postal Service, so it's easy to jump to the conclusion that it could be highly profitable to sell RHD vehicles to countries that do not have home-grown OEMs specializing in commercial fleet utility vehicles.