Canoo Has a New Electric Truck, Replete with Flip-Out Picnic Tables

Zac Estrada

Zac Estrada is a reporter covering transportation, technology and policy. A former reporter for The Verge and Jalopnik, his work has also appeared in Automobile Magazine, Autoweek, Pacific Standard, Boston.com and BLAC Detroit. A native of Southern California, he is a graduate of Northeastern University in Boston. You can find him on Twitter at @zacestrada.

Canoo electric truck

With streamlined styling, innovative packaging and a slew of novel features, Canoo Inc. released a first look at its electric truck. The Torrance-based company is set to produce a compact pick-up in 2023, entering an emerging market that includes Tesla and Rivian, but also General Motors and Ford.


"Our pickup truck is as strong as the toughest trucks out there and is designed to be exponentially more productive," Tony Aquila, executive chairman of Canoo, said in an announcement. "We made accessories for people who use trucks — on the job, weekends, adventure."

Canoo said its yet-to-be-named pickup truck would be available to pre-order in the second quarter of 2022.

Canoo electric truck Canoo's yet-to-be-named pickup truck would be available to pre-order in the second quarter of 2022.

Its payload capacity is also expected to be 1,800 pounds, which falls between midsize pickups like the Toyota Tacoma and full-size models like the Ram 1500. But at 184 inches long when the tailgate is closed, the Canoo pickup truck is expected to be nearly two feet shorter than the next smallest pickup truck on sale today. In terms of size, Canoo would fill a market that was largely abandoned by the 2000s as pickup buyers flocked to large, V8-powered full-size models.

That's due in part of the "cab-forward" design that puts the front wheels as far forward as possible. The electric components are under the cab of the truck, eliminating the need for a long hood and maximizing interior space for passengers and cargo. In place of a Tesla-like "frunk" cargo area in front, the Canoo truck has a fold-down desk and small storage cubby as a mobile workspace.

Canoo also said its truck will have innovations in the bed area, with flip-out picnic tables, storage dividers, household-style electrical outlets, a side-step to access the bed and even a built-in extender to accommodate longer items. A roof rack will be offered, as well as a camper shell that could also fit a small tent on it.

The company will offer single and dual motor configurations, giving the Canoo pickup truck either two-wheel or all-wheel drive, and up to 600 horsepower. Canoo did not disclose price targets for its pickup truck, although similarly sized gasoline rivals start around $26,000. But its 200-mile expected range is below that of many modern EVs, such as the Chevrolet Bolt and Tesla Model Y.

Canoo will enter a field that's nonexistent now, but is set to grow immensely in the first half of this decade. Amazon-backed Rivian, which also has operations in Carson and Irvine, unveiled its R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV in November 2018 at the Los Angeles Auto Show. It opened its online configurator and reservation book in November 2020 and targeted the first cars would roll off of an assembly line in Illinois in June. Prices range from $67,500 to $75,000, with an estimated range of between 300 and 400 miles on a full charge.

And there's also Tesla, which showed its boldly styled Cybertruck in November 2019, with reservations exceeding 250,000 by the end of that month. On an investors call in January, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said there would be, "a few deliveries of the Cybertruck in 2021," on target with the timeline from the reveal. While the Cybertruck is expected to be produced at a new Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, rather than with other Teslas in Fremont, it's still unclear if the radical styling and "unbreakable" glass will reach production. Target range is between 250 and 500 miles, with a $40,000 starting price.

Also in the offing are GM with the GMC Hummer EV due to start production in the fall with about 350 miles of range and an initial $113,000 price tag before less expensive variants arrive. Ford is also expected to show an all-electric version of the F-150 full-size pickup truck as early as next year.

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The Influencer-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready to Explode

Nat Rubio-Licht
Nat Rubio-Licht is a freelance reporter with dot.LA. They previously worked at Protocol writing the Source Code newsletter and at the L.A. Business Journal covering tech and aerospace. They can be reached at nat@dot.la.
The Influencer-to-Podcaster Pipeline Is Ready to Explode
Evan Xie

It’s no secret that men dominate the podcasting industry. Even as women continue to grow their foothold, men still make up many of the highest-earning podcasts, raking in massive paychecks from ad revenue and striking deals with streaming platforms worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But a new demographic is changing that narrative: Gen-Z female influencers and content creators.

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nat@dot.la

NASA’s JPL Receives Billions to Begin Understanding Our Solar System

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

NASA’s JPL Receives Billions to Begin Understanding Our Solar System
Evan Xie

NASA’s footprint in California is growing as the agency prepares for Congress to approve its proposed 2024 budget.

The overall NASA budget swelled 6% from the prior year, JPL deputy director Larry James told dot.LA. He added he sees that as a continuation of the last two presidential administrations’ focus on modernizing and bolstering the nation’s space program.

The money goes largely to existing NASA centers in California, including the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory run with Caltech, Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

California remains a hotspot for NASA space activity and investment. In 2021, the agency estimated its economic output impact on the region to be around $15.2 billion. That was far more than its closest competing states, including Texas ($9.3 billion) and Maryland (roughly $8 billion). That same year, NASA reported it employed over 66,000 people in California.

“In general, Congress has been very supportive” of the JPL and NASA’s missions, James said. “It’s generally bipartisan [and] supported by both sides of the aisle. In the last few years in general NASA has been able to have increased budgets.”

There are 41 current missions run by JPL and CalTech, and another 16 scheduled for the future. James added the new budget is “an incredible support for all the missions we want to do.”

The public-private partnership between NASA and local space companies continues to evolve, and the increased budget could be a boon for LA-based developers. Numerous contractors for NASA (including CalTech, which runs the JPL), Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Northrop Grumman all stand to gain new contracts once the budget is finalized, partly because NASA simply needs the private industry’s help to achieve all its goals.

James said that there was only one JPL mission that wasn’t funded – a mission to send an orbital satellite to survey the surface and interior of Venus, called VERITAS.

NASA Employment and Output ImpactEvan Xie

The Moon and Mars

Much of the money earmarked in the proposed 2024 budget is for crewed missions. Overall, NASA’s asking for $8 billion from Congress to fund lunar exploration missions. As part of this, the majority is earmarked for the upcoming Artemis mission, which aims to land a woman and person of color on the Moon’s south pole.

While there’s a number of high-profile missions the JPL is working on that are focused on Mars, including Mars Sample Return project (which received $949 million in this proposed budget) and Ingenuity helicopter and Perseverance rover, JPL also received significant funding to study the Earth’s climate and behavior.

JPL also got funding for several projects to map our universe. One is the SphereX Near Earth Objects surveyor mission, the goal of which is to use telescopes to “map the entire universe,” James said, adding that the mission was fully funded.

International Space Station

NASA’s also asking for more money to maintain the International Space Station (ISS), which houses a number of projects dedicated to better understanding the Earth’s climate and behavior.

The agency requested roughly $1.3 billion to maintain the ISS. It also is increasing its investment in space flight support, in-space transportation and commercial development of low-earth orbit (LEO). “The ISS is an incredible platform for us,” James said.

James added there are multiple missions outside or on board the ISS now taking data, including EMIT, which launched in July 2022. The EMIT mission studies arid dust sources on the planet using spectroscopy. It uses that data to remodel how mineral dust movement in North and South America might affect the Earth’s temperature changes.

Another ISS mission JPL launched is called ECOSTRESS. The mission sent a thermal radiometer onto the space station in June 2018 to monitor how plants lose water through their leaves, with the goal of figuring out how the terrestrial biosphere reacts to changes in water availability. James said the plan is to “tell you the kind of foliage health around the globe” from space.

One other ISS project is called Cold Atom Lab. It is “an incredible fundamental physics machine,” James said, that’s run by “three Nobel Prize winners as principal investigators on the Space Station.” Cold Atom Lab is a physics experiment geared toward figuring out how quantum phenomena behave in space by cooling atoms with lasers to just below absolute zero degrees.

In the long term, James was optimistic NASA’s imaging projects could lead to more dramatic discoveries. Surveying the makeup of planets’ atmospheres is a project “in the astrophysics domain we’re very excited about,” James said. He added that this imaging could lead to information about life on other planets, or, at the very least, an understanding of why they’re no longer habitable.

https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la

Behind Her Empire: Margaret Wishingrad On Creating A Low Sugar Cereal Brand

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Behind Her Empire: Margaret Wishingrad On Creating A Low Sugar Cereal Brand
Provided by BHE

On this episode of Behind Her Empire, Three Wishes founder and CEO Margaret Wishingrad talks about creating brand awareness and shares the key component to running a successful business.

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