Canoo reportedly places workers on ‘obligatory unpaid break’ for weeks

Canoo is having a really unmerry Christmas. Remaining staff of the beleaguered U.S. electrical automobile startup have been positioned on a “obligatory unpaid break” in response to TechCrunch, with no view to return for a number of weeks at minimal. 

Whereas it is not unusual for companies to shut across the finish of the 12 months, Canoo’s choice to place workers on break from Monday is unlikely to be pushed by vacation cheer. The corporate has been tormented by monetary issues and furloughs, resorting to borrowing thousands and thousands from CEO Tony Aquila‘s non-public fairness agency AFV Administration Advisors to be able to keep afloat.

Based on EV, workers have been notified of the obligatory break through e mail final Friday, and informed they might obtain additional updates to their private e mail addresses within the first week of January. Staff’ entry to Canoo’s system was apparently suspended by shut of enterprise the identical day.

“We apologize for the timing of this message,” Canoo’s e mail learn, as sighted by EV. “Please take this time to have a restful and fulfilling vacation season with your loved ones.”

Mashable has reached out to Canoo for remark, although we aren’t anticipating a reply contemplating that they are all reportedly on go away.

Final Wednesday Canoo introduced it had furloughed 82 staff and was idling its Oklahoma factories, suspending work whereas trying to safe the funding wanted to proceed working. This adopted a 12-week furlough of 30 Oklahoma manufacturing facility employees which was beforehand introduced in November. 

“We remorse having to furlough our staff, particularly in the course of the holidays, however we now have no alternative at this level,” mentioned Canoo in a short assertion final week. “We’re hopeful that we will carry them again to work quickly.”

This information is probably going unsurprising to anybody following the startup’s struggles. A number of executives have left Canoo prior to now few months, together with its final remaining co-founder. The corporate can be going through a number of lawsuits, a few of which concern allegations of unpaid payments. 

Final month Canoo reported having solely $700,000 in money reserves, its inventory sitting at simply $0.086 as of writing. The corporate misplaced over $300 million in 2023 alone, bringing in a mere $886,000 in income — and spending twice as a lot on Aquila’s non-public jet journey. 

Final 12 months, Oklahoma authorized as much as $100 million in performance-based state incentives for Canoo over the subsequent 10 years. Talking to Information 4 final week, the Oklahoma State Division of Commerce famous that it had solely paid Canoo $1 million to this point, and that “if obligatory, [it] will discover avenues to claw again public {dollars}.”

Canoo is not the one electrical automobile producer who appears to be ramping down this month. Tesla additionally briefly suspended Cybertruck manufacturing in early December, telling employees at its manufacturing facility in Austin to not report for his or her shifts for 3 days.