Canoo Anyroad Is the Dream Recreational Vehicle of Tomorrow

The gap between the two has been left wide open, and this is where Jerrick Chow positions its proposition: the Anyroad vehicle, an EV that is pretty much an offroad beast and recreational vehicle, without losing its main function as a city car. The two ideas seem to rule each other out, but Chow is somehow able to get them to work together.

Throughout the month of August, we’re celebrating all manners of vacation vehicles on autoevolution with our Travel Month coverage. The Canoo Anyroad is not a real vehicle, but it is one we’d like to imagine one day happening. When (and if) it does become real, it would be a perfect fit for weekend getaways for a small family or a couple of friends.

Chow, for one, imagines it perfect for a couple of adults working in IT, living in the big city, and using their off weekends to do some glamping. For them, the Anyroad makes sense, with the designer describing it as “a limited sport recreational vehicle, featuring a small size all-road platform and a form-fitted trailer targeting a niche market of Canoo fans.”

The Anyroad is a two-seater with an attached trailer that you will be excused for not noticing at first. Like with the iconic Boaterhome, the trailer is integrated into the vehicle towing it. Chow says this would make driving easier and smoother, as compared to driving with a towable trailer. It would also allow for the towing vehicle to roam the city streets just as easily as a small compact car, when the trailer was detached.

The trailer is actually a tent module. Like the towing vehicle, it’s designed for two, with only the basics covered: you get a bed inside and additional storage on the exterior, such as a luggage compartment, another compartment for outdoor stuff and a medical emergency kit, and a fold-down table with space to store foodstuff and cutlery. Once you drive at camp and you detach the trailer, it pops up to offer sleeping accommodation and shelter. The rig’s headlights, which represent a branding element for Canoo, have a dual purpose with this concept: the primary one is to illuminate the road ahead, and the secondary one is to be used as portable lights since they’re detachable.

The Anyroad comes with dual motors and dual battery packs. The secondary battery is in the trailer, so you can use it to feed the towing vehicle and get a combined range of 600 miles (966 km). When you use the towing vehicle without the tent module, it’s just a small 2-seater city car that you can still drive daily. The size of the trailer means you won’t have any trouble storing it inside a regular garage.

This sums up the main principle behind this design, which Chow sums up as “Tranquility, always. Wherever you might be.” Granted, the Anyroad would never do for stays longer than a few days’ worths of off-roading, and then too only hypothetically, for the time being. But it’s a cool example of a versatile and modular vehicle that could bridge the gap between a city car and an offroad rig in a way that would be more accessible for regular folks and more convenient.

As of the moment of press, Canoo is offering a Lifestyle Vehicle (a city car), a Multi-Purpose Delivery Van (MPDV), and a Pickup Truck, with spy photos revealing earlier this year that it’s also looking into delivering a sports sedan. The earliest timeline for deliveries is 2022 for the city car, with 2024 next for the pickup and a yet to be specified date for the MPDV.

Clearly, Canoo has no intention of launching yet another project for a mid-segment of the market, like the one targeted by the Anyroad. It has too much on its plate already. Chow is not directly affiliated with Canoo, so this is as far from an officially sanctioned project as possible. It’s a beautiful dream, nonetheless.