Arrival of an electric truck startup with a $ 46 million ‘microfactory’ in South Carolina

Arrival, a UK-based electric vehicle startup supported by Hyundai and Kia that is preparing to make electric delivery trucks for UPS, is building a small-scale “microfactory” in South Carolina that will be able to manufacture up to 1,000 battery-powered buses per year.

The company is investing just $ 46 million to establish its first production facility in the United States in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and will employ 240 workers when it opens next year. Arrival unveiled its public transport bus project in June, featuring a subway car-like interior, and says it costs less than competing electric models due to the use of relatively lighter and smaller batteries, low-cost materials and a cheaper assembly process.

The microfactory is the company’s first in the United States and “is the beginning of a paradigm shift in the EV space,” said Mike Ableson, American CEO of Arrival, formerly General Motors

GM
executive overseeing the automaker’s electric vehicle strategy.

Founded in London in 2015 by businessman Denis Sverdlov, who made an undisclosed fortune with the sale of Russian cell phone company Yota in 2012, Arrival aims to be a leading supplier of electric trucks and buses as demand for emission-free vehicles expands. The company says its commercial vans will cost the same as conventional models powered by diesel or gasoline and that its buses will be the cheapest on the market, allowing them to be sold without heavy public subsidies.

Arrival believes it can reduce the cost of its high-tech vehicles by using lighter materials, including aluminum instead of steel for the frame, and body panels made from internally developed composite materials. The company’s microfactory concept also aims to make the manufacturing process as cheap as possible. Instead of requiring hundreds of hectares of land and a purpose-built structure, the company says it can set up and equip a microfactory in a conventional warehouse in about six months.

Microfactories do not use expensive metal stamping presses, welding or painting workshops and do not use fixed assembly lines. Instead, its flat skate chassis is assembled with extruded aluminum components, the body panels are joined with aerospace-style adhesives, and coloring is done by tinting the composite material or wrapping a vehicle. Automated guide vehicles carry sections of the body to assembly cells throughout the factory. The company’s first microfactory is in Bicester, England, where it is fine-tuning the assembly process, near a R&D facility in Banbury.

The arrival is not identifying customers of the battery buses that will be made in South Carolina or saying how much they will sell for. Diesel-powered buses cost about $ 500,000 and electric models, such as those produced by Proterra and BYD, can be at least $ 200,000 more expensive. Buses built in South Carolina range in size from 35 to 45 feet, with a payload range of up to 300 miles. The company says its buses weigh 35,250 pounds when loaded with passengers. This appears to be 6,750 pounds lighter than the total weight with Proterra’s 35-foot Catalyst model passengers.

South Carolina has an electric bus factory, a factory in Greenville operated by Proterra, from Silicon Valley, and BMW has a huge luxury vehicle factory in Spartanburg. The state’s automotive manufacturing base was instrumental in its choice, said Arrival spokeswoman Victoria Tomlinson.

The startup came out of semi-stealth with a bang earlier this year, when Hyundai and Kia bought a 100 million euro ($ 110 million) stake. This raised his valuation to more than $ 3 billion. Soon after, UPS, which is also an investor, said it would buy up to 10,000 electric delivery vans for its fleet, in a deal that could reach nearly $ 500 million.