Canoo hit with two supplier lawsuits as last remaining co-founder leaves

EV startup Canoo has been hit with two new lawsuits from suppliers linked to the drivetrains that power its electric vehicles, just weeks after the company kicked off a major reorganization that included the departure of its chief technology officer.

Canoo has also parted ways with senior director of advanced vehicle engineering Christoph Kuttner, who was the last remaining co-founder from the team of nine that created the startup in late 2017, TechCrunch has learned.

Kuttner was one of nine co-founders who split off from Faraday Future at the end of 2017 to start up Evelozcity, the original incarnation of Canoo. Those co-founders have steadily slipped away from the company before, during, and after its transition from a private startup to a publicly traded company in late 2020 when it merged with a special purpose acquisition company.

Kuttner and Canoo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The supplier lawsuits, both of which were filed in September with Oakland County Circuit Court in Michigan, come at a time when Canoo is moving away from its original California headquarters and focusing increasingly on its operations in Texas and Oklahoma, and while courting potential customers in the U.K. and Middle East. It’s doing all of this on a tight budget. The company reported just a little more than $19 million in total cash, of which $4.5 million was unrestricted, as of June 30, 2024.

The two firms suing Canoo are Jing-Jin Electric North America and Dana Limited. Canoo had tapped Jing-Jin, or JJE, to design and build electric motors for the EV startup’s vehicles. JJE claims Canoo failed to pay for the motors and owed more than $1.4 million as of August 2023. The supplier alleges Canoo didn’t dispute the money owed and then “strung JJE along for months — repeatedly promising to pay JJE, blaming its delay on issues and factors wholly unrelated to JJE.”

In November 2023, according to the complaint, JJE and Canoo entered into a repayment plan to set things right. JJE says Canoo made its first three payments, totaling $851,013, and an additional payment of $120,649.23. But JJE says the payments stopped soon after, despite Canoo owing another $446,692.77. JJE suspended all work for Canoo in June 2024 and says the EV startup stopped responding.

Dana Limited, meanwhile, says it entered an agreement with Canoo in February 2022 to co-design and develop a drive assembly for Canoo’s vehicles. Dana Limited says that as part of the agreement, Canoo was required to compensate the supplier for any costs incurred if the EV startup’s vehicle production was delayed by more than three months.

“Canoo’s production and work under the Agreement was significantly delayed,” Dana Limited writes in the complaint. The supplier now alleges Canoo failed to make two $4.3 million cost recovery payments despite sending “several notices” to the EV startup through late 2023 and into 2024.