Opinion: to boost its car project, Apple should acquire EV startup Canoo, which warned it is running out of money, and whose former CEO now works for Apple
Apple could take a look at struggling electric-vehicle startup Canoo to help it build up its car project.
Context & Ripple Effects
Bloomberg's column revives a thread Apple has pulled before: sources reported talks between Apple and Canoo back in 2020, centered on the startup's scalable electric vehicle platform, and in 2021 Apple hired Canoo co-founder Ulrich Kranz, the BMW i3 and i8 development lead, onto its car team (Kranz hire). With Canoo now warning it is running out of cash, the argument is that Apple could buy cheaply what it once tried to partner for.
The piece reads differently in hindsight: later reporting on the car project's indecision and eventual failure shows Apple spent years weighing partnership and acquisition talks with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, VW, Tesla, and McLaren before scrapping the effort — meaning the Canoo idea was one option in a decade-long search for a shortcut that never materialized.
First-order effects
- An acquisition would hand Apple Canoo's skateboard EV platform and engineering team outright, while giving Canoo's investors an exit ahead of a cash crunch that the company itself says threatens operations.
- Kranz's presence on Apple's car project lowers integration risk — the person who built Canoo would be inside the acquirer.
Second-order effects
- Canoo's disclosed cash warning weakens its bargaining position, pushing any price toward distressed levels and making other capital-starved EV startups look like comparable bargain targets for large tech buyers.
- Rival automakers lose the option of Canoo as a platform licensor or partner if Apple absorbs it, tightening the supply of independent EV platforms available to smaller manufacturers.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across Apple's car saga — internal hiring since 2015, talks with Tesla and Canoo, courtship of established automakers — suggests even the richest buyer found no reliable shortcut to automotive capability, pointing toward consolidation where struggling EV startups are absorbed rather than scaled independently.
- If capability acquisitions keep failing where they promise speed, the durable lesson for the industry is that vehicle manufacturing resists the software-style acqui-hire model, raising the bar for any tech company entering hardware-heavy markets.
The trend: Tech giants approaching carmaking through acquisitions and partnerships of EV startups are discovering that buying capability is no substitute for building it, as Apple's own project trajectory shows.