Out of all the unusual, unbelievable, and ultimately unattainable ambitious Oklahoma business projects that have been announced over the past couple of years – from amusement parks to large giant skyscrapers to even larger giant skyscrapers – I think my favorite one was the effort by Stitt to lure the electric vehicle scheme Canoo to Oklahoma.
Granted, it’s my favorite primarily because it gave me an opportunity to dust off all of my tipped canoe and dead battery puns and metaphors, but I guess that’s a valid reason!
In case you need a refresher, Canoo was a fledgling publicly-traded electric vehicle company that seemed more focused on acquiring Wall Street debt to enrich its executives than producing any electric vehicles.
This fact was obvious to anyone who studied the company, but it didn’t seem to matter to Governor Stitt and his roundtable of yes-men, brown-nosers, and other economic advisors.
They were desperate for some good headlines after losing out on economic deals with Panasonic, Tesla, and other companies, so they ignored reason and reality and gave the high-risk company a nice subsidy package to set up a manufacturing plant in Oklahoma.
The Oklahoman’s Steve Lackmeyer took a brick-by-brick look at that scheme, how it developed, Canoo’s predictable fall, and its questionable future in today’s Oklahoman.
Oklahoma Gov. Stitt lost out on Tesla. Then came Canoo, and red flags https://t.co/Uuo9niU2aq
— The Oklahoman (@TheOklahoman_) June 18, 2025
The main takeaways from Steve’s piece are…
A) It was obvious that Canoo was some sort of scam, and Oklahoma taxpayers are now in the hole for $1 million.
B) Steve Lackmeyer has found something to write about that isn’t Bricktown.
Here are the details via The Oklahoman:
Four years [after agreeing to deal with Oklahoma], it is unclear if Canoo ever built a single vehicle in Oklahoma before closing shop and declaring bankruptcy earlier this year. And as Oklahoma joins the list of investors and vendors seeking to recover money from the company, its failure raises questions over how deeply the state vetted Aquila and Canoo and whether their history should have raised red flags as Stitt promoted the company and pushed for approval of the incentives package.
Even before the June 2021 agreement with Oklahoma, the company was under SEC investigation over turnover in executive ranks, changes in its business model and exaggerated revenue projections.
For now, vendors that provided products and services for Canoo are waiting to get paid. Ditto for former employees of the bankrupt startup who are suing for past-due paychecks.
Investors have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. And Oklahoma taxpayers may never recover the $1 million that had been paid to Canoo so far as part of the failed job incentives agreement.
In the whole Stitt scheme of things, one million isn’t a whole bunch of money.
For example, it’s way less than the bills taxpayers have had to foot for hydroxychloroquine, the Swadley’s Foggy Bottom swindle, and Class Wallet heist.
But still, one million bucks is one million bucks, and just think of all the various types of bibles we could put in Oklahoma classrooms with that kind of money lying around!
Seriously, it really makes you wish we had a strong independent press to document the red flags with Canoo, call out the absurdity of the deal, and question the lofty goals and promises. Well, that is a strong independent press that’s not run by a guy who lives in his mom’s basement:
Sure, you don’t need an elite B.S. detector to be skeptical of shady self-serving businessmen with questionable backgrounds making deals with each other – or to know that the Canoo deal had more to do with face-saving and self-enrichment than legitimately putting Oklahoma manufactured electric vehicles on the road – but I can never turn down the opportunity to go full Ultimate and give it up to myself.
For what it’s worth, we weren’t the only outlet to flag Canoo’s struggles. The Frontier and others also produced solid reporting questioning the wisdom of doling out millions to a doomed venture.
Unfortunately, we live in a state run by GOP grifters and populated by a blissfully uninformed public more concerned with culture-war wins than competent governance, so it doesn’t really matter – an inconvenient truth we’ll realize when our next governor gives $1-million to some scammy, questionable AI company in a couple of years, and history repeats itself.
When it does, I’ll be sure to give it up to myself.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
