In a press release yesterday eVan/eBus manufacturer Arrival announced that:

Scaling production in the Bicester microfactory requires significant further investment in hard tooling and working capital and the Company has determined that the benefits of such an investment would be best directed to the US market.

As a result, today the Company announced a plan to restructure its business to focus resources on a family of Van products for the US market as well as its enabling technologies – including core components, composite materials, mobile robotics, and software-defined factories.
The Company will continue to produce a small number of Vans in Bicester to optimize microfactory processes and support trials with customers.

The major factors in the Company’s decision to shift focus to developing its US business included the tax credit recently announced as part of the Inflation Reduction Act – expected to offer between $7,500 to $40,000 for commercial vehicles, the large addressable market size, and substantially better margins.

The business plans to raise capital to fund the commercialization of these vehicle programs in the US and is exploring all funding and strategic opportunities needed to bring the Vans designed for the US into production at the company’s second Microfactory in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In order to extend the company’s cash runway, Arrival plans to further right-size the organization and cut cash intensive activities while continuing to advance its core technologies. The result of these proposals is expected to have a sizable impact on the Company’s global workforce, predominantly in the UK.

By way of some additional explanation of Arrival’s announcement, here is a chart of their share price since listing on the NASDAQ exchange:

Another Great British automotive success story?