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Calif.-founded EV maker Canoo, once worth $2.4 billion, goes belly-up after moving to Texas (www.sfgate.com)
submitted 3 months ago by mesamunefire@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 116 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Unlike what the title would suggest, the "moving to Texas" part was basically immaterial to the company's failure.

They never had any product to ship to begin with and were basically subsisting on loans and venture capital money to continue bullshitting with a theoretical product. Add in some dodgy regulatory practices resulting in fines from the Government and questionable business practices. When the funding dried up, they withered like a sponge in the California (or Texas) sun.

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 51 points 3 months ago

Fuck Texas

[-] frunch@lemmy.world 34 points 3 months ago

My takeaway as well! Canoo can go eat a dick, but Texas can go eat a huge dick

[-] UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 months ago

I am confused: why should Texas be rewarded with dick-meat? Should they not rather eat excrement?

[-] Mac@mander.xyz 4 points 3 months ago

Didn't you hear? "Gay" is synonymous with "bad".

[-] adarza@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 months ago

perhaps the move to a human-hostile environment such as texas cost them some good employees.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago

The entire point of my comment was to indicate that this had seemingly little to no impact on the company's success. Even the best employees in the world can't save a company that is shipping no product and run by idiots.

[-] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Reading the article, that doesn't seem to have had the slightest impact on this. They tanked because of shitty and sketchy management

[-] SuiXi3D@fedia.io 5 points 3 months ago

It couldn’t have helped, at least.

[-] ABCDE@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

The person already said it wasn't because of that, no need to "perhaps" by disregarding the effort they went to.

[-] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 55 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

In August, Canoo moved its headquarters from Torrance, Calif., to Justin, Texas — asking 137 of the office’s 194 employees to relocate, while cutting the remaining staff.

Yikes, not great for all those employees that moved their entire lives out to TX just to get laid off. They weren't even working in TX long enough to qualify for unemployment. Hopefully they were getting paid enough to deal with relocation and maybe have enough saved up to get the hell out of TX after this.

[-] stoly@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago

They can still get CA unemployment because they would have worked through eligible periods prior to their moves. I had similar happen when I moved to Louisiana and got laid off. The guy at the unemployment office told me to apply in CA instead because the rate would be higher.

[-] Sprocketfree@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago

So now CA is paying for TX unemployment... They should send TX the bill

[-] stoly@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

You are eligible for any state you worked in during the applicable period. It’ doesn’t matter if you still live there.

[-] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

imagine asking the women you work with, and your colleague's spouses and daughters:

"Hey, let's uproot everything and move to uterightsbannedistan, er, Texas, where a pregnancy complication could easily kill any of you, but the corporation will save LOADS!"

fucking chodes

[-] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 45 points 3 months ago

Me thinks the United States economy has a small valuation problem.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 19 points 3 months ago

The stock market isn't the economy, but yes, I generally agree, everything tech is overvalued.

[-] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago

No one said it was and it's not even remotely exclusive to tech.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You said the economy has a valuation problem. That doesn't make sense, since the economy is about jobs and trade, not about valuations. The stock market (including public and private markets) is about valuations.

[-] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

Valuation allows for borrowing. If a company can determine it's worth to a potential lender by using it's valuation, which we agree is under the markets domain, then they are now hand in hand. If you can borrow against valuation they cannot be exclusive.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Sure, and that's a stock market issue (broadly speaking), not an economic one. Someone losing their shirt for investing stupidly is not indicative of an economic failure, but of a valuation failure.

Valuation problems can lead to economic problems if it's widespread enough, such as with the .com or RE market collapses, but they can also be pretty isolated and have minimal impact. Intel's valuation, for example, has been cut to almost a third (not by a third, but to a third), and that hasn't triggered or indicated much of anything in the economy, it's just Intel failing over and over to live up to their valuation. Yeah, jobs get cut (economic indicator) when there's a huge discrepancy w/ valuation, but they also tend to get created at other orgs as they snap up the business left behind by the failing company.

The economy and the market are certainly related and linked, but they're not the same thing. An economic collapse usually causes or is caused by a market collapse and vice versa, but not always, especially if it's isolated to a sector like we see with AI. If everyone completely 180s on AI, it's not going to change the jobs landscape much, but it will cause a lot of valuation corrections throughout the tech industry. Companies like Microsoft and Nvidia will be fine since they have other core businesses, but companies like OpenAI won't be nearly as resilient since that's their entire business. Likewise, financial companies investing in AI companies will also likely be fine, provided they have a sufficiently diversified portfolio.

[-] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 months ago

the US Dollar is partly based on value. The value of American ingenuity and brands, and the dollar availability and acceptability.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

The US dollar, or any currency, isn't the economy either. Look at the recent bout of inflation we had, unemployment remained pretty steady despite relatively extreme rate hikes.

The US dollar is based on supply, which impacts relative value. It's all interconnected, but central banks can manage inflation/deflation regardless of what happens to the economy.

[-] karpintero@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago

I was hoping their truck or lifestyle vehicle would make it to market, but yeah they had a steep hill to climb with all the turmoil surrounding the company, scaling production, and the change in political winds now being essentially hostile to EV manufacturers.

In August, Canoo moved its headquarters from Torrance, Calif., to Justin, Texas — asking 137 of the office’s 194 employees to relocate, while cutting the remaining staff.

Moving wasn't going to save the company so why uproot your employees only to fold 5 months later

[-] drahardja@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

I wonder if Texas has better bankruptcy laws.

[-] karpintero@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)
[-] blady_blah@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

It was probably part of a cost cutting plan too show they were trimming costs in order to get more funding from investors. It clearly didn't work.

[-] daddy32@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

political winds now being essentially hostile to EV manufacturers.

Wonder what musk's got to say about that. Or are the winds hostile against tesla's competition only?

[-] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 24 points 3 months ago

Writing was on the wall after they lost their Amazon and USPS bids. Their entire model was based on landing fleet contracts.

[-] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 3 months ago

Sad. I was rooting for their weird-looking trucks, though they looked more and more like vapor-ware.

[-] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee -4 points 3 months ago

There's a reason why vehicles look the way they do, and why EVs and ICE vehicles look similar, and it's because that's what customers want.

I look very suspiciously at a car company whose product looks radically different from everyone else.

[-] Xanthrax@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Does anyone else only remember their dream if they're lucid dreaming, but for some reason, it immediately wakes you up when you realize you're lucid dreaming?

Edit: WRONG POST

[-] YerbaYerba@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago

Reality check!

this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
223 points (94.1% liked)

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