Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO's private jet
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The CEO here sold his previous company for $6.5 billion [1], so he already owned the jet before starting Canoo. The company reimburses him for corporate travel on it.
What's concerning is that Canoo is stacking big losses and living on the edge...it seems like excessive spending for a company that hasn't even made a dime of profit.
But hold on, this same CEO has spent over $230 million(!) buying Canoo stock from his personal funds [2], so he is significantly in the red no matter how much he gets reimbursed for air travel.
Always dig into the details and avoid getting suckered by clickbait...
The investment does sound absolutely reasonable at this point.
This happens in literally every other market and industry. hell, just look at PCs and laptops.
Like why can't a Canoo or Rivian license a base EV platform and come up with their own chassis design, infotainment system, and other little things to differentiate themselves?
why does it HAVE to be all or nothing?
The analogy in the PC world would not be "license a design from an ODM like Compal or Quanta", it'd be "license a design from Dell or Lenovo".
That in itself suggests a potential market: perhaps there's room for an ODM in the automotive space?
So why wouldn't Ford or GM be cool with letting a smaller label do this and testing the market?
This has recently happened to a well known EV company relying on just the electrical platform from a well known and highly respected auto maker that they have a good relationship with. It means they’ve had to go looking at other platforms (again, just the electrical platform) and has put the whole company at risk.
Light duty truck and van builders e.g. Ford and GM do the same thing but mostly for companies building RVs rather than commercial equipment.
Tesla's original was a fork of a Lotus. They got the whole chassis/etc from Lotus, dropped in their own drive train and other stuff. Other reply mentioned paccar.
Idk why it doesn't happen more often. I suspect most manufacturers aren't willing to license like that.
When you talk about a base platform I assume you are meaning an entire drive train? Most pieces of a car are going to be produced elsewhere and then assembled. Canoo isn’t making their own batteries or motors. Those come from battery and motor manufacturers. Canoo or a similar company might even buy structural battery pack built to spec by CATL.
There are some examples where car makers (both EV and ICE) will sell components to competitors but in general this is pretty rare. Most companies want to control key aspects of their supply chain.
Rivian did use motors from Bosch but is now in the process of using their own internally designed motors. This allows them to build exactly what they need and avoid relying on Bosch for a key component of their vehicles.
Kind of. Renault's small sized EVs share parts of the platform as some ICE models (e.g. Clio/Renault 5 E-Tech) which allows them to reduce costs of the EV model. Considering their target audience and market segment (small city-focused EV with city-scale range) the tradeoff is perfectly acceptable.
> and there is no EV base platform for sale/license
How do you know this? Renault for instance are in a pretty specific spot, market wise, and they were trying to merge with Fiat-Chrysler before the latter ended up with PSA (Peugeot, Citroen, Opel) in Stellantis. They have some EV tech, especially on the cheap city-focused side (Dacia Spring, Renault Zoe, Renault 5 E-tech), and would probably be open to collaborating / sharing risks. This is purely conjecture of course.
Also, Subaru managed to license Toyota's EV tech.
The ICE car market is a massive market, which taking a part of required massive long term investment, and would result in you being relegated to just some minor side note.
Even Toyota one of the longest biggest players is still seen as kinda "new" compared to BMW and VW, let alone hyundai which is basically a massive state backed effort.
Now consider, all of that 100+ year history becoming completely irrelevant. An opportunity to time travel back 100 years and try to become the BMW of the future. I think this is what is exciting people.
when is the last time an entrenched trillion dollar industry with hardly any shakeups in decades suddenly had the ability for anyone to enter and say their biggest advantage is that they are new?
I am not saying I agree with it, I think knowing how to make a luxury car is a skill... But I don't think the goal of these CEOs and investors is to make a good car. Their goal is to make a 100+ year global legacy like BMW. If they could do that without making the car I am sure they would.
So now the ICEs are scrambling to catch up, and are doing so, but lots of money is flowing around hoping to be the next Tesla.
And their sales were still dwarfed by legacy manufacturers, who then started paying attention and practically all of them have at least one EV model out there, often with new platforms/models being in the works.
Meanwhile the legacy companies will keep moving slowly along and produce vehicles. Some will die, some will merge, some will have wild successes.
But it's much different than Google et al because cars actually cost about as much to make and sell as they do to buy.
EV cars seem to be the go-between for ICE and the real answer for Green.
I imagine anyone willing to license one at the moment only has a crappy one to sell you or it is some Chinese EV, which creates political problems.
That's sort of what Tesla did with the Roadster. It was a Lotus that they put an electric motor into.
Alpine makes forks of BMWs.
Braubas makes forks of Mercedes.
RUF makes forks of Porsche.
The other example is when 2+ large manufacturers work together to cost share a platform.
Examples:
- BMW Z4 / Toyota Supra
- Subaru BRZ / Toyota GT86
- Mitsubishi 3000GT / Dodge Stealth
The NUMMI car factory in Fremont, CA was jointly owned by GM and Toyota before Tesla bought it. For a while, it made the Toyota Voltz / Pontiac Vibe.
I think people get the impression from the wording that the “platform available off the shelf” means the consuming manufacturer can just grab some units and modify them, but in practice, there is a massive contractual negotiation. And since car manufacturers are heavily regulated, it makes sense to cost share both the manufacturing and the standards / crash testing.
You gain margin by controlling the supply line. Otherwise you should just be a subsidiary of one the big ones you mentioned.
"It's just smart business!"
"People are jealous because they didn't think of this!"
"They're only coming after him because he's rich!"
"You would do this too if you were him!"
Not defending this guy but I'd say the opposite happens. When you are rich/famous you are looked at with a magnifying glass. Nothing illegal is happening here, but it doesn't "look good".
Obviously, too late for canoo, but if you're running a startup you can learn from his mistakes.
Honestly at this point the reputational damage is enough, that the CEO should probably resign, if for no other reason to boost market confidence in the company and raise the value of his own shares.
> Under a deal reached in November 2020, Canoo reimburses Aquila Family Ventures, an entity owned by the CEO, for use of an aircraft. In 2023, Canoo spent $1.7 million on this reimbursement — that’s double the amount of revenue it generated. Canoo paid Aquila Family Ventures $1.3 million in 2022 and $1.8 million in 2021 for use of the aircraft.
> Separately, Canoo also paid Aquila Family Ventures $1.7 million in 2023, $1.1 million in 2022 and $500,000 in 2021 for shared services support in its Justin, Texas, corporate office facility, according to regulatory filings.
sound familiar?
> The 11-story office building at 88 University Place was leased to WeWork and co-owned by Neumann, the company's co-founder and CEO. It was one of many buildings that WeWork leased from Neumann. Critics called the leases a conflict of interest for WeWork and an example of self-dealing by its charismatic leader.
He's not the only shareholder. I am not sure the others appreciate paying for the CEO's lavish lifestyle when his company is on the brink of failure, even though the CEO is also in the red. And as you say, if he really wants to travel private, he can always use his own plane and not charge anything for it. The other shareholders are basically bankrolling his plane.
It's one think for Zuck or Tim Cook to claim that flying commercial would be dangerous and a waste of time, but the way that attitude has filtered down to very small companies is astounding (especially given the outsized negative impact private jet travel has on the rest of us).
Any reasonable board for a public company that size and a CEO that unrecognizable should at most reimburse first class fare and if the CEO wants to fly private, the delta can come from personal funds.
The guy is already ultra-rich...he might as well pay for those flights himself to show solidarity with shareholders. But it's up to Canoo shareholders to decide that, not me.
I even got affected by that at a restaurant I worked at; they fed us and we got a small "virtual" payment that would show up on our taxes for that meal.
It’s pretty unreal when you think about it that our culture has not small cadres of credentialed, professional liars for hire. Not just for CEOs either, think about the fake service pets for another example.
Is this what the kids call late stage capitalism?
The politicians play us with "eat the rich" and "fair share". Meanwhile they increase taxes on 400k in HCOL areas making it painful to succeed.
Why isn't the slogan "stop the loopholes" (The one in this thread)? Because politicians play us against each other instead of fixing laws they benefit from.
Every common shareholder is an equal, you don't get to launder jet travel the way he's doing - that's securities fraud.
If a CEO is intentionally creating a situation to make a company unprofitable and paying it back by buying shares, that is 100% securities fraud and I'm stunned anyone disagreed with that assertion.
I'm not saying the company is committing securities fraud, I am saying that if the company created a scheme as described by the commentor I was replying to, then that would be securities fraud.
https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/0...
> Aquila Commits Misappropriation Of Solera Assets And Resources
> After execution of the Separation Agreement and Omnibus Agreement, Solera confirmed that prior to his separation from the Company, Aquila had misappropriated Solera’s resources and money by fraudulently claiming that certain flight and hotel expenses were for Solera business, when in fact, Aquila incurred these expenses solely on personal, non-Solera business—including fundraising for his intended new investment venture.
> Specifically, Aquila used a private jet chartered by Solera (Gulfstream IV- SP-N910AF) solely for Aquila’s personal business, but nevertheless charged the flights to Solera, between November 2018 and May 2019—i.e., when Aquila was still Solera’s President and CEO. For example, Aquila had Solera pay over $700,000 for 45.8 hours of flight time for Aquila’s trips to, among other places, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Bulgaria, Qatar, Kuwait, and France, as well as thousands of dollars for certain hotel expenses associated with certain of these trips. These trips were not for Solera business. Aquila traveled for personal purposes, including in connection with his position as the Chairman of the Board of Sportradar and to fundraise for his new “Founders Select” venture.
> Solera is continuing to investigate Aquila’s pre-separation activities with respect to any further instances of fraud, theft, misappropriation, or other actions of Aquila giving rise to claims that are not released under the Separation Agreement.
Canoo is one of a few EV companies that on paper should make it. They have an order book that takes them to profitability. They have alpha vehicles that work (aka the product is not science fiction). Since they're selling these primarily as fleet vehicles, it's pretty valid to believe that the typical consumer EV concerns (range anxiety, nonfunctional/overbooked chargers, I live in an apartment, etc) should apply, their customers have the capital to spend, and can even easily calculate depreciation and expected benefit over existing fleet inventory.
100% of the risk in the company is manufacturing risk + not fucking up the finances e.g. by going too far into debt where the product payout doesn't make sense. That's a pretty nice place to be for being an EV company in the market now.
It seems like the mainstream American EV manufacturers are very blinkered-- bigger, heavier, longer range, more luxury. Those products might appeal to buyers in the US, Canada, maybe Australia, but for the rest of the world, you're going to have to compete with manufacturers like BYD.
I could see the Canoo product selling in a lot of markets that you'd never sell a Lucid Air or Rivian R1T in. Once they've got a stable base on fleet orders, I could see them acquiring a quirky street cred among consumers-- sort of like Volkswagens of the '60s and '70s.
You're probably right that it's more reasonable for flying overseas. But for local travel, limitations on timing, connections, and airports served turn into a big waste of time. It's an analysis that has to be made about the value of the CEO or whoever's time, but it's not black and white, and a couple million bucks vs a few 100k for way better scheduling could easily be worth it.
'Canoo Tony Aquila Fireside' Chat https://youtu.be/AlTG8S0F_fo
It sounds like he's actually doing quite a good job as CEO. The vid from minute 3 to 7 gives much of his strategy and how he got into it.
He was a billionaire investor with a background in car parts and servicing that looked at 12 or so EV companies to invest in and figured Canoo was the one and then the board asked him to be CEO.
I guess if you are a struggling EV company looking for some billionaire to save you you may have to put up with him using a jet.
Some of that is market, but TSLA is -15% since then.
Hint - Most ultra-rich people make their money in boring industries you wouldn't even know about.
1- https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/delisted/SLH/solera-holdi...
If you are the sole owner, that's all fine.
If there are co-owners, that shouldn't be done unless everyone gets some benefits.
I once worked for a company that went bust. It wasn't able to pay its suppliers anymore, but alway paid rent on time. Guess who owned the building.
So especially when your company is doing bad, any money you get out is money they cannot take away.
You can talk about standard complaints of CEOs with private jets, and I'd probably agree with you here, but there isn't anything particularly egregious here.
"Our management has performed an analysis of our ability to continue as a going concern and has identified substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern. If we are unable to obtain sufficient additional funding or do not have access to additional capital, we will be unable to execute our business plans and could be required to terminate or significantly curtail our operations."
Different places/environments/skill levels have different costs, so what?
https://jobs.lever.co/Anthropic/9ba1d7b4-5b21-4ac9-86f3-875a...
If you get hired, reach out to me via my protonmail email (same username) to discuss sending my finder's fee ;)
Good lord. You hiring?
> Canoo reimburses Aquila Family Ventures, an entity owned by the CEO, for use of an aircraft.
Would that pass muster?
Presumably you hire the employee for their time and expertise, not because they own a car and offer its use for company travel below market rate. (That does happen in many industries, but that's a market distortion we should look down on, not a yardstick for what's right)
With $2m on the line, it is worth it even just for the tax savings.
So even if it's "a drop in the bucket", it's also not really a company expense, just an outrageous compensation.
Like the guy already has a jet, which presumably he can afford to run.
Taking money out of an unprofitable company to pay for (somewhat) unreasonable personal expenses kinda feels off to me.
But then, maybe I'd feel differently if I had a private jet ;)
The rest is bs clickbait.
Seems like straight up embezzlement.
It’d be much cleaner ethically for him to get reimbursed the cost of a business class ticket and pay for his jet out of pocket if he can’t abide flying with the little people.
(Honestly, even if they had revenue in the hundreds of millions, it'd still be rather absurd.)
Edit: looks like private flights are actually much more dangerous than airlines, the insurance would probably prefer if you would fly public… (not my favorite source but the first thing I found: https://www.livescience.com/49701-private-planes-safety.html )
With a private jet you can be at the airport and direct into your waiting car with security escort without anyone knowing, which can greatly reduce the chance of other issues occurring.
Most of the accidents involve small one-engine aircraft that owners personally fly. They're technically "private," but what's relevant here is large private planes like Gulfstreams, Bombardier Globals, Dassault Falcons, Boeing BBJs, and the like..they're safer than airlines.
Definitely don't subcontract your own family's (edit: your own) "services company".
I am not trying to defend him, he is getting paid a lot:
"On May 5, 2023, the Board granted Mr. Aquila an award of 6,884,682 RSUs. These awards vest on May 5, 2024, subject to continuous service." [1]
At current stock price it is ~$20M. Getting outraged about additional $1.7M that was negotiated several years ago is strange. It does make a great headline, but would it change anything if he is paid $22M and pays for the jet out of pocket?
[1] https://ir.stockpr.com/canoo/sec-filings-email/content/00016...
Seems like the CEO's comfort when travelling should be a lot lower in the company's list of priorities, as it's losing hundreds of millions a year.
Maybe that can be achieved for less than $1.7M, I'm not informed enough. This source https://simpleflying.com/gulftream-g700-cost-to-own-operate-.... says it's a little more than $2M per year to operate a Gulfstream G700, I don't know what kind of jets CEOs are using these days.
I'm surprised there are any employees left at the company. If I saw that the CEO is actively funneling funds out of the company where we work, to their family's company, I'll be long gone.
Or maybe it's a case of "time to renegotiate my salary with that in mind". ;)
His voters love him.
The food is generally excellent in urban areas - cafe culture rules for those who can afford it.
Main issue is cost of living - housing and food costs are kind of silly relative to average income.
Mosquitos are really not an issue - people up north might have a different experience, but from Auckland on down, no one needs screens.
Food - groceries are pricey! It was surprisingly expensive given the lower wages here. CA seems to be catching up though!
Mosquitoes - comparable to LA, less than Sonoma County. Smaller too. But here on the South Island we also have sandflies. They vary by region. West Coast has them bad in some remote spots.
I'd live there too if it wasn't literally on the other side of the planet for me and I don't want to cause hundreds of tons of CO2 every time I want to see my family :'(
> billing the government
An added bonus for Trump was that his properties were also accessible to the public, so he got to make extra $$$ from people who wanted to stay close to where the President was. No previous president had that kind of an arrangement.
Edit: the point is that the win condition is electoral votes. A rational actor will optimize for that, potentially at the expense of the popular vote even, and they will be more likely to win for it. In other words, don't have your quarterback spend his practice time in the batting cages if you want to win the super bowl.
Assuming those trips may eventually lead to business deals, and that the amounts reimbursed are in line with free market prices, it is advantageous to Canoo.
Their CEO could be x% "more effective" (I know how abstract that sounds), ultimately benefiting the company, and maybe they even got a good deal ("hey, I own a jet, and it has to fly at least 200 times per year to cover its maintenance costs. If you allow me to use it for Canoo-related trips, which are anyway needed, and reimburse me, I'll charge you less than what netjets wold cost us. Deal? Y/N")
The real world tends to be more nuanced, but in principle it stands, at least until proven guilty/shady.
Of course that individual later pled guilty to a variety of federal crimes, so :shrug:
If every other "car company" has a private jet ready to whisk the CEO anywhere in the world, you might look really silly to other companies who expect you to be able to make a near last minute meeting.
And if you're an employee, as long as you get paid you're likely not to care much about it.
He's not. He's funneling funds into the company. He's basically a billionaire investor who owned the jet before bailing out Canoo.
> The company generated $886,000 in revenue in 2023 compared to zero dollars in 2022 [...] In 2023, Canoo spent $1.7 million on this reimbursement — that’s double the amount of revenue it generated. Canoo paid Aquila Family Ventures $1.3 million in 2022 and $1.8 million in 2021 for use of the aircraft.
https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1399053&tc=7 shows him putting in $236m or so
No, we're not on the same footing as a CEO candidate or 10x developer. Anyone who is sure as heck wouldn't be wasting their life collecting karma points on HN.
The really rich CEOs collect imaginary karma points on X ...
I thought the downvotes were coming from people who didn't get my sarcasm, but it could also be that HN readers really believe that CEOs are inherently better people...
Terrence Tao is inherently better at mathematics than I am, and I'd be a fool to claim otherwise. Torvalds is a much better programmer than I am. There are endless examples.
Now if we start arguing if Torvalds "deserves" to be richer than Gates (even though both are quite better than adequate programmers from their time) that's a different story.
But in the end most of it really sounds like sour grapes and complaining.
It's a holding company for the CEO's assets. Virtually everyone worth $10 million+ has one.
When and why did people become so conspiratorial and see boogeymen in everything they don't grasp?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/panama-paradise-pandora-pap...
Furthermore there's a reason rich people flock to places like Delaware, Washington, or California. Those states all have tax schemes that allow the wealthy to pay the least amount of taxes.
Hell us rubes even suffer through coach so that the ultra wealthy's luxury jets are subsidized.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ultra-wealthy-private-flyers...
We understand exactly what they're doing, just because we don't agree with it doesn't make us ignorant or uneducated.
Washington and California are two massive economies, so it's no surprise that rich people flock there.
If this CEO wanted to register a shell company to dodge taxes, he would have done it in better places than Southlake, Texas [1]. Anyone can register an LLC as long as they have valid identification and pay the $300 Texas filing fee...nothing nefarious.
Talking about the Panama Papers will be a long story, but notice how relatively few Americans are on that list. It was mostly people from developing countries with weak rule of law and high levels of corruption...the type where rich folks hide assets to avoid the government or rival business goons coming for it, and it's much easier to cheat taxes in those countries because of weak law enforcement.
They punish the poor more than the rich in both those states. That's why they flock there and the size of their economy is a side effect of that.
It has low taxes for people who've lived there a long time.
"act as Treasurer for my local church"
I'd get…?
Three jobs ago I also had a very small side consulting gig that came along after I'd been hired, so I had to get it cleared. It was at the behest of one of their board members though, so it really wasn't a hassle...
The selling services back and forth thing, I get it, it probably saves some people some work and it might even work out better economically for the company, but the optics are never going to be solid and people are always going to question it, so imo it's not worth it, but... it is quite common.
That's what he's doing, albeit in a more complex situation and likely higher wealth bracket given he sold his last company for $Bs. The only thing that strikes me as odd about it is calling oneself "CEO" of the family office. I don't know what title is customary but CEO seems out of place. If it said he was "Chair" of the Aquila Family Ventures family office or something it would stand out far less.
No, it's not logical, or consistent, or rationally defensible. They don't give a shit, and they don't believe they have you answer to you. If they choose to give any answer at all, it will be bullshit in the "On Bullshit" sense of the word; the answer will not be made with any consideration for truth, but just to provide whatever words the speaker thinks will shut you up.
This is WeWork level sketch: “ Canoo reimburses Aquila Family Ventures, an entity owned by the CEO, for use of an aircraft”
This is a PUBLIC company??
But definitely not for a company with just a few $100k in annual revenue that's teetering on bankruptcy. Not surprised it's a SPAC stock...
Edit: Upon digging; I discovered that this CEO has invested $230 million+ in Canoo (from personal funds he made selling his previous company)...this article is almost a nothing burger.
I mean there's a reason they didn't do it, because they couldn't.
I don't think a company should be paying for the boss's jet, if the company isn't near break-even. I'd say the boss doesn't believe the company has legs, and he's extracting cash while he can.
>Canoo reimburses Aquila Family Ventures, an entity owned by the CEO, for use of an aircraft. In 2023, Canoo spent $1.7 million on this reimbursement.
CEO owns a plane. CEO uses the plane (for business, one presumes). Business reimburses CEO for plane. That looks like a poor use of funds, but not necessarily self-dealing?
I mean, in their position he should probably be flying coach - maybe he's so good that he's totally worth spending seven figures for his travel (though I doubt it) - but it's technically no different than reimbursing any other travel expense.
Better system: they could reimburse the minimum airfare, and he could cover the difference himself. Everyone has that figured out for us peons, when we request a more convenient flight. (Want to bet they imposed that on their employees?)
I'd absolutely be willing to bet the deal that regular employees get is worse-than-or-equal-to what you described. Most companies I have worked for do not even let you choose. If you are doing business travel, you use the company's preferred travel agency, and fly on the flight you're given, even if you could independently find a business-class flight just as cheap.
Edit: I just remembered a totally silly travel situation during my academic career. The school sent me to an academic conference in an interesting location, and I wanted to stay for an extra week to do some touristing. (It was during summer vacation, and golly do I miss those.)
No one had any problem with it, and they told me standard practice was for me to call the airline and pay the $250 (or whatever it was) change fee. No problem, until I noticed that tickets with the new return date would be something like $400 less than the original dates. No tickets had yet been purchased, so I suggested that they buy me those dates directly: everyone would win.
Except... "Sorry, we can't do that." Huh? "Travel must be +/- 2 days of the conference dates."
I presented the situation to my department chair, hoping for an intervention, but she sighed, and said that those people were impossible to deal with. "But, it's the end of the fiscal year, and I have some extra budget [somewhere], so submit a reimbursement form for the $250, and I'll sign it."
Silly, right?
Talking about other EV startups, I wonder how much longer Aptera can remain in a state somewhere in between not having gone bankrupt and not having started production yet. They do seem to be forever inching closer toward the latter [1].
[1] https://electrek.co/2024/04/01/aptera-showcase-solar-ev-tech...
Plenty of companies spend more than that on just AWS egress fees.
I’m not saying money spent on a private jet is right or wrong.
But when a company is not profitable, you could compare this to anything. Like the headline could have easily been “Canoo spent double its annual revenue on AWS egress fees”
What we’re seeing here is more like if those egress charges were due to him hosting the business on his own cloud service even though it cost more.
If CEO travel is a legitimate business function, you're now arguing "AWS vs server in your closet" kind of questions and haggling on price.
But startup CEOs leading companies with 800 employees that can't ship hardly anything are movin & shakin so startupfully between plays and deals that they ain't got no time for that.
$1.8 million per year for travel is $5,000 per day. That's more than a day-of round-trip first-class flight on ANA ($20k today) from NYC to Tokyo every week.
You just drive up and walk onto the plane.
For executives in a tight race with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, where a schedule slipping even 1 day can matter, sometimes flying private does actually make financial sense.
I'm not an executive.
I would never disgrace my ancestors or embarrass my descendants by getting an MBA.
But I have been around the block a few times and if you're in a situation where missing a flight will torpedo a "hundred million dollar" deal you're a shitty businessperson.
It has been my experience that the best way to keep a schedule from slipping is for executives to keep their mouths shut, cloistered in their office, waiting for an assistant to build some slides for them.
I wonder when the public wakes up and understands that rich people don't own anything "personally" so you can increase VAT and income tax just as much as you like to tax the rich.
You can make other choices.
In case you are confused by the headline, as I was
so who's to say which is better.
Well, shoot. I thought the truck looked really cool.
9,300-vehicle binding order to Kingbee https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/20/canoo-delivers-first-of...
I've seen people saying rates are going higher from here back in 2022. While this isn't my base case, it certainly isn't impossible.
Anyone who survives that deserves all of the rewards.
Not sure how that'll look on the financial statements. ;)
Any guess how much of that money actually went into operating the aircraft, and how much was skimmed by the CEO? Madness either way, but we can't have it filed under the wrong kind of madness, right?
Note that the capital outlay for a jet is a minor portion of the total operating budget over the years. Fuel and crew is the major component especially with smaller jets.