The electric vehicle startup, Arrival, has produced its first battery-powered electric van, a significant step toward its goal of delivering the trucks to commercial customers at scale.
the van of Arrival it is the first vehicle built at the company's micro-factory in Bicester, UK, which uses autonomous mobile robots instead of a traditional assembly line. The remaining trucks built this year will go to testing, validation and quality control, rather than delivery to the customer.
“Although we have not yet achieved series production, we are focused on making it happen”said the founder and CEO of Arrival, Denis Sverdlov, in a statement.
The van comes months after the UK-based publicly traded company said it would shelve plans for an electric bus to focus on van development. The move forced the company to reduce its delivery target for 2022 by 95%, from 400 vehicles to 20.
The company has faced several production delays since going public in March 2021 through a $660 million SPAC deal with CIIG Merger. That includes a class action lawsuit against the company and cost-cutting measures that included large-scale layoffs.
