Where Is Canoo Headed Tech-Wise, and How Fast Is It Paddling There?

Canoo's long march toward building a salable electric vehicle continues, but while you might be familiar with its upcoming LV electric van and Pickup truck models, here's an update on advances the company is working on, gleaned fresh from our first drive opportunity in the LV.

TEM, Not OEM

CEO Tony Aquila describes Canoo as a Technology Equipment Manufacturer, not an Original Equipment Manufacturer. Among the distinctions, he prefers to treat the many component technologies that comprise a Canoo vehicle as businesses in themselves. Key component technologies such as the batteries, powertrain, the 12-volt operating system, and the operating system that makes it all work are not only designed and developed in-house, they're viewed as potential revenue generators in and of themselves.

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Batteries

Canoo is going to market with 2170 cylindrical cells like those used on the Tesla Model 3, but Canoo's patented system of integrating, controlling, and cooling them involves a liquid-cooled casting into which the bottoms of two layers of 132 cells get inserted to form a module. Atop each cell is a cell-sensing board (CSB) which monitors and reports on the health of each cell. These modules get individually incorporated into the skateboard, such that if a CSB determines a cell has died or compromises a module, it can be replaced individually. They're not glued in as an integral all-or-nothing pack, as with some brands.

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Motors

Canoo holds 58 patents on its permanent-magnet rotor and stator design, materials, and cooling procedure, which is basically a water jacket cooling the stator with oil sprayed on the end windings. And as with several others, the motor is integrated with its gear-reduction drive, inverter, and even the compressor that handles the cabin AC and the chiller used to thermally manage the electrical system in hot weather. This unitized design makes it compact and easily serviceable.

In-House Electronics Boost Efficiency

By designing all its own software and operating system in-house early on in the design process, Canoo was able to optimize all systems to deliver more functionality with reduced power draw and utilizing fewer computer chips—great for both cost and supply-chain resiliency. And with a fully steer-by-wire chassis in need of serious redundancy, the system includes two 12-volt batteries and a completely mirrored 12-volt architecture to ensure safety. Canoo claims its total 12-volt operating system power draw is on the order of 200 watts, which favorably compares with some competitors' systems' 1-kW 12-volt draw. The system is also easily accessible in case the 12-volt batteries ever go flat (they're needed to wake the high-voltage system, so yes, it's important to be able to "jump-start" an EV).

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Fewer Parts, More Assemblies

One key TEM mandate is to ship, store, and assemble as few things as possible. Fine tuning of the assembly process—which will incorporate automatic guided vehicles and more assembly stations in the roomier Oklahoma assembly plant—helped reduce the total number of parts for assembly to about 1,600 for the LV.

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Test to Fail, Not to Pass

With a corporate mandate to maximize value for second and third owners, Canoo endeavors to tests all systems to failure, rather than to a pass a series of established durability tests. By failing most components, the company not only gets the chance to redesign around failure modes, it also can fine-tune design for repairability. Oh, and part of the durability testing regimen for the Lifestyle Vehicle range has included thousands of miles in last-mile delivery duty.