Arrival, once considered one of the most promising electric vehicle startups in the LCV segment, was placed under external management as a result of the financial crisis, crisis -managers will try to sell the main assets and developments of Arrival.
The British electric vehicle startup Arrival (its name translates from English into Russian as “arrival”) was founded in 2015 by a native of Russia Denis Sverdlov, previously engaged in the telecommunications business. The last time we wrote a note about Arrival was in January last year, when the company was already in crisis and trying to switch from the European market to the more promising American one.
Meanwhile, Arrival's prospects looked promising in 2020: the company went public on the Nasdaq exchange and, according to The Guardian, attracted $660 million in investment. Arrival's investors included the South Korean company Hyundai; the American courier service UPS ordered Arrival 10,000 electric vans at once; at the beginning of 2021, the startup's market capitalization was about $15 billion. This success was due to the frantic attention of investors at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to startups operating in the last-mile delivery segment — in a world sitting in quarantine, this segment was growing at a breakneck pace.
Arrival electric van
Arrival's main product would be modular electric vans — the company argued that their production could be quickly set up in so-called microfactories anywhere in the world. A pilot factory was launched in 2022 in Bicester, Oxfordshire, England, producing several pre-production prototypes for testing.
In 2021, Arrival introduced an electric taxi (compact van) developed for the company Uber, its production was supposed to begin at the end of 2023, but due to the financial problems that had accumulated at Arrival, it never began; deliveries of Arrival vans to customers also stalled.
Electric taxi developed by Arrival for Uber
Last week, the Nasdaq exchange administration removed Arrival from trading due to a critical collapse in the value of its shares and violations of reporting rules. Yesterday, Arrival itself announced the introduction of external management from the audit and consulting company Ernst & Young (EY). In fact, we are talking about bankruptcy, since Arrival is no longer able to pay its bills, its remaining British employees (about 170 people) after previous waves of cuts are under threat of dismissal.
EY administrators are now exploring the possibility of selling the entire Arrival business, but it is not a fact that such a sale will take place: against the backdrop of the aggravated geopolitical situation, it will be difficult to find anyone willing to save the sinking startup not easy, especially since competition in the commercial electric vehicle market has sharply intensified in recent years; there are too many players, including from rapidly developing China.