Eight years ago, Arrival embarked on a mission to revolutionize electric vehicle production, aiming to make it significantly more efficient. However, the plan to replace gigafactories with local microfactories has faced numerous challenges.
Arrival initially boasted about its automated microfactories, promising to simultaneously produce electric vans for UPS, cars for Uber drivers, and buses for various regions. However, over the past 15 months, the company’s story has taken a different turn.
Arrival Planned to Revolutionize Car Manufacturing, But Now it’s Barely Hanging On
It has undergone four rounds of layoffs, reduced production targets, and abandoned its Uber car and bus programs. Furthermore, Arrival is struggling to meet Securities and Exchange Commission filing requirements. In a recent regulatory filing, the company disclosed that it missed another deadline for filing its 2022 annual report, which has placed it in violation of Nasdaq Exchange rules. If Arrival doesn’t successfully appeal, Nasdaq will suspend trading of its ordinary shares on November 9.
Arrival, which entered the public market through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company during the meme stock frenzy of 2021, seems unlikely to achieve its goals.
Before its initial SPAC merger, Arrival operated in secrecy. Will it meet a similar fate?
Arrival’s upcoming earnings report might reveal the extent of its remaining financial strength. However, as the company didn’t release its September financial report and hasn’t responded to TechCrunch’s requests for comment, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to assess Arrival’s current state of uncertainty. Here’s how Arrival, a company that entered Nasdaq with a valuation of $13 billion, has dwindled over the past 15 months to a market capitalization of just under $20 million.
Layoffs
The first round of layoffs occurred at Arrival in July 2022 when the company announced a 30% reduction in its workforce. Arrival employed approximately 2,700 workers in the U.K., EU, and U.S. at that time, which meant that over 800 people would lose their jobs.
During this period, the Hyundai-, BlackRock-, and UPS-supported startup was not the only one facing layoffs. Tesla and Rivian also revealed substantial workforce reductions. These automakers collectively attributed the job cuts to factors such as an impending recession, rising interest rates, inflation, the pandemic, and supply chain issues.
Significant Accomplishments
In August 2022, Arrival’s founder and CEO, Denis Sverdlov, reflected on the second quarter and highlighted “significant accomplishments.” These included securing EU certification for its van and bus and successfully conducting internal trials on public roads. The CEO confidently stated that Arrival would start producing EVs in its first microfactory within weeks, a moment he believed would “revolutionize the automotive industry.” Sverdlov also reiterated Arrival’s commitment to delivering its first vehicles to UPS that year and initiating U.S. production in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2023.
The company was going to fulfill at least one of those commitments.
Arrival had $513 million in reported cash at the end of Q2 2022. The publicly traded company stated that it intended to raise an extra $300 million from investors through a stock offering based on its share price. To provide context, Arrival’s share price was $77 when it opened on August 1.
