Tag Archives: Arrival

Arrival’s UK Subsidiaries Enter Administration

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In a press release earlier today Arrival announced that:

Arrival today announced that Simon Edel, Alan Hudson and Sam Woodward of EY-Parthenon’s Turnaround and Restructuring Strategy team were appointed as joint administrators (the “Administrators”) of Arrival UK Ltd and Arrival Automotive UK Limited (the “Companies”), both subsidiaries of Arrival. All of Arrival’s other subsidiaries will continue their activities as usual outside of the administration process. The Administrators are now exploring options for the sale of the business and assets of the Companies, including the electric vehicle platform, software, intellectual property and R&D assets, for the benefit of creditors.

Arrival’s mission is to master a radically more efficient New Method to design, produce, sell and service purpose-built electric vehicles, to support a world where cities are free from fossil fuel vehicles. Arrival’s in-house technologies enable a unique approach to producing vehicles using rapidly-scalable, local Microfactories. Arrival is a joint stock company governed by Luxembourg law.

So much for the long promised, allegedly revolutionary, vehicle-to-grid capable Arrival electric van:

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Arrival (Mostly) Leaves the UK

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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?

Fully Charged Delivers Moving Pictures of the ARRIVAL e-Van

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We previously got quite excited about the Great British ARRIVAL electric (not diesel!) van. At that time there were some snarky comments on social media to the effect that “The van never moves in that video”. Well now it most certainly does! Take a look at the latest episode of Robert Llewellyn’s Fully Charged:

Of course we eagerly awaited some mention of our favourite three letter acronym – “V2G”. Unlike the recent launch of the new Ariya eSUV from Nissan, we were not disappointed by this update on the progress at ARRIVAL. Notice that at 4:00 into the video Robert Llewellyn asks:

Are these vehicles, for instance, vehicle-to-grid capable. Bi-directional charging is possible?

to which Patrick Bion, ARRIVAL’s head of product replies:

Absolutely!

Which is very good to hear from our admittedly biased perspective. A bit later on, at
7:30, Robert says:

I can see they have rapid charging capabilities, they have CCS charge sockets.

and Patrick confirms:

Yeah, that’s right.

Putting those two snippets of information together and you get the magic words “V2G [over] CCS”!

Here’s our take on this convoluted story from our Twitter feed:

and here’s our (hopefully ARRIVAL compatible!) bi-directional charging station, which has been patiently waiting for an ARRIVAL van’s arrival in our more modest car park since this time last year:

Here too is a video of our “soft launch” during the V2G panel session at the Fully Charged Live show at Silverstone in 2019:

Watch this space!

For another year? Or perhaps even until 2025 as officially pronounced by CharIN not so very long ago?

UPS Order 10,000 ARRIVAL eVans – With V2G?

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In a press release earlier this week UPS announced that:

UPS today said its venture capital arm, UPS Ventures, has completed a minority investment in Arrival, which makes electric vehicle (EV) platforms and purpose-built vehicles that offer a highly competitive value proposition when compared with both traditional internal combustion engine vehicles, as well as existing EVs. Along with the investment in Arrival, UPS also announced a commitment to purchase 10,000 electric vehicles to be built for UPS with priority access to purchase additional electric vehicles.

ARRIVAL has also released this video:

UPS invests in Arrival and orders Generation 2 Electric Vehicles from Arrival on Vimeo.

One thing that other news reports seem to have missed is that ARRIVAL are members of the Innovate UK Vehicle to Grid Oxford consortium (V2GO for short):

Arrival is a technology company fuelled by the ambition to make EVs the new normal. Driven by a team curated from the world’s most renowned technology and automotive brands, Arrival have taken a blank canvas and turned it into something extraordinary. Designed from the ground up, Arrival has created electric vehicles as they should be – simple, smart, modular. One skateboard platform, easily scaled, easily manufactured, easily turned into multiple vehicle types. This completely unique approach is what will pave the way to delivering premium, autonomous ready, electric vehicles on mass without a premium price tag.

Arrival will be developing the vehicle-to-grid enabled light commercial vehicle for project V2GO. This will be used for the real life assessment of V2G.

Here’s Katherine Collett from the University of Oxford explaining the benefits of combining vehicle-to-grid technology with a fleet of electric delivery vans:

Hence one cannot help but wonder whether any of the thousands of ARRIVAL vans that UPS have just ordered will be equipped with V2G capabilities? If so we have just the thing for charging and discharging them in our car park:

DSC_0460

Perhaps UPS would like to order a few of those for research purposes?