ARRIVAL Electric vans

[SWoll]

Interesting video on Fully Charged today about this UK company based out of Banbury that I've never heard of before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I781itRPJH8

Could really be one to watch. Good luck to them.

[blank]

They've been around for a few years (used to be called Charge). Financed by a Russian billionaire and now seem to have a big cash injection from UPS as well.

See also Roborace and the Charge electric Mustang. All the same company essentially.

[phil4]

Saw that vid and thought - what's holding them up?

[SWoll]

Physically or metaphorically?

[phil4]

SWoll said:

Physically or metaphorically?

Less concisely I meant - why are they not selling them already? why are we not seeing them driving around already? The list of EV's "coming soon" seems to be growing massively, but the list of EV's available to buy still seems small.

[anonymous-user]

phil4 said:

Saw that vid and thought - what's holding them up?

The simple fact that they are doing EVERYTHING themselves!

The traditional automotive supply chain is enourmous, and supplies standardised components and subsystems to a reasonably standard production line type facility.

Arrival are doing everything themselves, starting with a clean sheet of paper. From the employee canteen to the guy that sweeps the floor, from the motor design to the sourcing of the stickers, from the csting of a wheel house to the robot and jig that will assemble a subframe, everything has to be engineered and productionised. This is a HUGE undertaking. Historically, commerical vehicle manufacturers have simple assembled vehicles from a kit of 3rd party parts. And engine from Cummins, a chassis from Magna, a driver display from Valeo, seats from Phoenix, etc etc They are simply integrators and not really manufacturers. And there assembly lines are basic and primarily human driven, making commercial vehicles expensive and quite poorly built (compared to a typical modern passenger car)

[TheRainMaker]

Shame they didn't talk about range, weight capability or cost.

From a van point of view, on the face of it the design for DHL looks fantasic though, good racking in the back, low entry points and direct access into the load area.

[finlo]

Max_Torque said:

The simple fact that they are doing EVERYTHING themselves!

The traditional automotive supply chain is enourmous, and supplies standardised components and subsystems to a reasonably standard production line type facility.

Arrival are doing everything themselves, starting with a clean sheet of paper. From the employee canteen to the guy that sweeps the floor, from the motor design to the sourcing of the stickers, from the csting of a wheel house to the robot and jig that will assemble a subframe, everything has to be engineered and productionised. This is a HUGE undertaking. Historically, commerical vehicle manufacturers have simple assembled vehicles from a kit of 3rd party parts. And engine from Cummins, a chassis from Magna, a driver display from Valeo, seats from Phoenix, etc etc They are simply integrators and not really manufacturers. And there assembly lines are basic and primarily human driven, making commercial vehicles expensive and quite poorly built (compared to a typical modern passenger car)

Haven't Hyundai/Kia teamed up with them? If so they'll be able to draw on their technologies speeding things up.

[Europa Jon]

Maybe they're running on grant money from somewhere - enough to produce prototypes, but not enough to set up production.

[M4cruiser]

Sadly it didn't work. Products looked good, ideas quite novel, but maybe too ambitious?

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/arrival-enters-ad...

[Om]

Dead on Arrival...

[dhutch]

M4cruiser said:

Sadly it didn't work. Products looked good, ideas quite novel, but maybe too ambitious?

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/arrival-enters-ad...

Thats a shame, hopefully something comes from the sale of the ashes!

[Otispunkmeyer]

I met some of the guys working on this, testing/development at least.

Quite interesting some of the things they said. Sounded like there was a lot of superfluous work being done... i.e. focusing on the "nice to haves" instead of just nailing the basics first and stuff being designed and tested that was really over-engineered or overly complex for the task (its a van, not a sportscar were the words used!). Whether that is true or not I can't say for sure.

[Otispunkmeyer]

dhutch said:

M4cruiser said:

Sadly it didn't work. Products looked good, ideas quite novel, but maybe too ambitious?

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/arrival-enters-ad...

Thats a shame, hopefully something comes from the sale of the ashes!

IIRC they sorta half folded once already, I guess this was the final nail. I know some of their kit got purchased by us the first time round.

[chrisch77]

Unfortunately being (largely) owned by a Russian didn't do them any favours after early 2022, and may well be a significant reason why their startup finance dried up.