The Canoo Pickup Truck Is Like A Futuristic Electric Mitsubishi Delica

Praise the Lord - we have news about an EV start-up that doesn’t involve a car that costs a gajillion dollars and has 3000bhp for some reason. What we have here is the Canoo Pickup, coming from a young company based in Los Angeles.

The firm’s newest creation is more worried about utility than hypercar-beating acceleration times. It’s the size of a Ford Ranger, yet has the capacity of a full-size pickup, with the six-foot load bed able to take over 800kg of stuff. Oh, and you can bolt one of several ‘camper shells’ to the back, making it look like a fourth-generation Mitsubishi Delica. It’s official, we’re sold.

The load bed opens at the sides as well as the rear, and it’s also possible to extend it to eight feet when required. Other handy features include a fold-down work table at the front revealing a small storage area, and pull-out side steps for easier access to the load bed. Again, the latter doubles as storage.

There are two keys to making all this room in a small vehicle: the use of brake and steering by-wire systems, and the packaging benefits we’ve already seen proven many times through the use of a bespoke ‘skateboard’-style structure. This common approach sees the floor of the vehicle made up of batteries with the motors placed at either end. Simple, but effective.

Although performance isn’t the point of the Canoo Pickup, you can have one with a 600bhp, 500lb ft dual-motor powertrain if you must. Canoo hasn’t said how big the battery is, but we do know it’ll provide over 200 miles of range. If you’re happy putting a small dent in that relatively modest figure, you can use the Pickup as a giant power bank, with sockets on all sides of the vehicle. Apparently, you can run a bunch of tools off it for a whole day and only reduce the range by about 10 per cent.

Pre-orders are said to be opening during the second-quarter of 2021, with first deliveries taking place at some point in 2023.