Home » Can electric vehicle start-ups really succeed in the van market?

Can electric vehicle start-ups really succeed in the van market?

Unless you are a legacy OEM (or you have a billionaire benefactor) you’re doomed to fail, such is the cost of development, design and manufacturing.
George Barrow
George Barrow
January 26, 2025

Regrettably, the Texas-based van start-up Canoo filed for bankruptcy last week, adding another name to the graveyard of names that have tried to break into the commercial vehicle sector and failed.

We’ve seen countless names try and ironically it has been electric vehicle manufacturers that have seen the greatest number of victims.

Delving into the memory banks, does anyone remember Modec? The Coventy-based electric vehicle start-up promised so much with its large courier-specific design. It stayed around for years in various iterations but never made it beyond a handful of seed vehicles. Around the same time there was the Azure Dynamics Transit Connect Electric.

I remember driving it in Birmingham and thinking this could be the future for vans. Unfortunately, 2010 proved to be something of a false start for electric vans and Azure didn’t survive long enough to see the electric small van sell in any serious numbers.

Fast forward more than a decade and electric vehicles are everywhere, but still the names keep falling by the wayside.

Arrival had all the elements needed, on paper at least, to be a real disruptor in the sector. But not long after opening a new site near Banbury they mothballed their UK operation. That was despite some proposed hefty contracts with large blue chips.

Canoo has gone a similar way. Their product looked to capitalise on the enormous growth in the home delivery and package courier industry, with an innovative sliding rack coming out of the side door. I’ll leave my thoughts on the validity of their product design, as I was not one of the few people to truly get any meaningful hands on time with the van, but finances have got the better of them before mass production (or at least small scale) begins.

With so much competition coming from the east where electric vans, particularly in China, have been commonplace for a number of years, any new start-up is playing catch up.

It feels like unless you are a legacy OEM (and believe me not all of those have got their electric van strategy correct) or you have a billionaire benefactor, you’re doomed to fail, such is the cost of development, design and manufacturing.

Tesla are of course the exception to the rule, breaking in to the car market, but were it not for their high stock valuation (based on its tech prowess, potential and of course personality, rather than its products) you feel that they too might not have survived. While success of any sort is not to be sniffed at, succeeding in the commercial vehicle industry feels just that bit harder.

Buyers aren’t looking at clever design or innovation. A commercial vehicle buyer has just two things in mind. Can it do the job I need it to do, and will it cost me more or less than the vehicle I currently operate.

Buying a new van isn’t about the best infotainment system, nor is it (often) about looks. Practicality, like payload, the overall dimensions and the towing capacity all feature heavily in a sensible decision, as does price and TCO.

However, from my frequent interaction with van users and buyers, the top priority is reliability. If a van is off the road, it’s not earning money.

For that reason, electric vehicles simply aren’t at the first and forefront of the buying public’s decision.

EV’s are inevitable, and they’re improving with every new release but the van market is very nuisanced, buyers are far more savvy than retailer car buyers.

We’ll see a series of bespoke electric van platforms coming from the main OEMs shortly, including Mercedes-Benz, new van market entry Kia and an exciting Renault-made start-up called Flexis.

All will be hoping to answer questions that manufacturers like Canoo and Arrival failed to get right.

Search All Reviews By Make

BYD logoCitroen logo introduced in 2022Ford logoFiat logoineos logoisuzu logoIveco logokia logomaxus logoMercedes-Benz logoNissan logoPeugeot logoRenault logoToyota logoVauxhall logoVolkswagen logo
Copyright © Van Reviewer. All rights reserved.
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram