EV Startup Canoo Will Go Public via SPAC

Another one.

Yesterday, Los Angeles EV startup Canoo said it would go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). I’ve covered Canoo twice before. The TL;DR—it’s designing a subscription-based, “loft on wheels” EV from scratch.

SPACs 🤝 EVs

Nikola, which hopes to eventually sell EV pickups and hydrogen fuel-cell trucks, IPO’d via SPAC in June. EV startups Lordstown Motors and Fisker have also announced plans to IPO via SPAC.

• “The car industry is so capital-intensive. I’ve done this before. I really didn’t see the possibility of raising a billion dollars in private financing that easy,” Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker told me last month.

Nikola’s current market cap = $16.2 billion. Lordstown, Fisker, and Canoo are targeting equity merger valuations of $1.6 billion, $2.9 billion, and $2.4 billion, respectively.

Bottom line: Going public ≠ revenue, production-ready vehicles, or a working business model. Though some of these companies may flame out, more investors are willing to bet on new EV players as Tesla soars.