Jeff Bezos isn’t the only one clamoring for electric delivery vans

Weeks before Rivian’s blockbuster initial public offering late last year, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos managed to both commend and cajole the electric-vehicle upstart’s chief executive in under 180 characters.

Bezos called Rivian founder RJ Scaringe “one of the greatest entrepreneurs I’ve ever met,” then quipped: “Now, RJ, where are our vans?!”

Nine months later, Amazon and retailing rivals like Walmart are still hard-pressed to get their hands on enough electric delivery vehicles. For all the progress manufacturers have made getting more plug-in passenger cars into the garages of consumers, there are only a handful of batterypowered vans on the market to transport goods to doorsteps.

All this helps explain why Walmart did a deal this week with Canoo, a company just two months removed from issuing a going-concern warning. Canoo announced its Bentonville, Arkansas-based neighbor had ordered 4,500 of its still-in-development vans, and will have the option to purchase as many as 10,000.

Founded in late 2017 by a set of executives who broke away from another troubled EV startup, Faraday Future, Canoo spent its first few years toiling away on a bubbly looking electric van it planned to sell through a subscription service. It also planned to provide contract-engineering services to other carmakers and technology companies to tide itself over until it began manufacturing its own vehicles.

Soon after it went public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, Canoo pulled a 180, de-emphasizing both those business lines to focus on selling to commercial fleets. Canoo’s CEO, CFO, head of corporate strategy and its top lawyer left in short order. The Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation. Even after the surge in its stock price this week, Canoo has squandered almost three quarters of the market value it debuted with in December 2020.