Producing their first production verification vehicle, Arrival is proud of their team for their hard work to make this happen. This first van is a manifestation of their in-house technologies all coming together to produce a vehicle in a Microfactory – from the composite materials, autonomous mobile robots, and components to the software that controls the robots in the factory. These initial production vehicles will be used for product and process optimization and customer trials. They will not be sold to customers.
Even those using the classical conveyor belt method have had to slash production targets, recall vehicles and raise costs, showing just how hard this transition to production is. It is even more difficult when you fundamentally change how vehicles are produced.
Arrival has invested approximately $1.6 billion into the company (much lower than a traditional OEM). With that, they have developed their own components, software, composites, and autonomous mobile robots, certifying two products and developing the Microfactory. Arrival is not different, having faced many challenges in the past 15 months that have made every stage of initial production even more challenging. For this, there is no playbook, so our incredible team has to work exceptionally hard to solve any issues they find, which are not blockers but take time.
On top of developing an entirely new method of designing and assembling vehicles, Arrival has faced delays in their supply chain that have had impacts on our timelines as well as a changing market environment due to pandemic, inflation, and war, which has forced us to reprioritize and preserve the cash they have on hand in a world where costs are increasing daily.
Source: Arrival