Walmart Buying 4500 Canoo EV Delivery Trucks; Canoo’s Stock Leaps

Walmart will row its boat for the final leg of online-order deliveries with 4500 Canoos. As part of its initiative to achieve zero emissions by 2040, the superstore chain said today that it has signed a “definitive agreement” with Canoo, an U.S. EV startup, to purchase 4500 of its electric vehicles for use in last-mile delivery. It will also have the option to purchase up to 10,000 more later.

Canoo announced the agreement Tuesday, which involves the brand’s specialty Lifestyle Delivery Vehicles (LDVs), which Walmart will become the first entity to receive. The LDV is a modified version of Canoo’s pod-shaped Lifestyle Vehicle (LV), an all-electric consumer utility vehicle with up to seven seats in a unique limousine-esque U-shape. The Delivery version, however, forgoes rear seats for cargo space and boasts 250 miles of range via an 80.0-kWh battery. Canoo also claims a 1464-pound payload capacity.

Walmart will use the LDVs for last-mile delivery, which is the final step in an online-order package’s delivery. Basically, the Canoos will take your package from a local transportation hub to your front door. In the release, Canoo claims that the vehicles should hit the road for Walmart in 2023, but that LDVs will begin limited use in the coming weeks around the Dallas/Fort Worth area so Walmart can fine-tune the vehicle’s configuration.

Car and Driver recently reported financial troubles for the up-and-coming EV startup, but Tuesday’s announcement saw Canoo’s stock open at $4.65 a share, nearly double its Monday closing value of $2.37. The company went public in December 2020, opening at $22.75 a share, but it has since steadily declined, though it’s important to note that other EV startups to have recently gone public—Rivian, Lightning eMotors, and others—have been following the same trajectory.