I'm getting this question like 'why is Arrival different?' many times and I would say that actually everything is different - people, culture,
technologies we are using, materials, components, method of manufacturing. The only thing which probably similar to other companies that our products
are called van and bus but everything else is different.
The automotive industry, the way how it is now, was developing for more than 100 years and it was a lot of innovations and a lot of optimisation with
the process and today, we believe that the industry isn't the maximum level of efficiency. What we understand today, that is not enough, because we still
get vehicles which are expensive and that's not sustainable and that's why we started Arrival in January 2015, with the idea to reinvent the way
vehicles are made.
One of the things that makes Arrival different is our Microfactory approach to assembling and manufacturing vehicles. A Microfactory is a much, much
simpler process as compared to a legacy automotive manufacturing plan. A typical automotive assembly plant takes literally years to construct. We
can do that whole thing in six months or less. So it's maybe one sixth the amount of time and maybe one tenth of the CapEx is that.
The vehicle, the way they are designed today cannot be assembled by Microfactories. The vehicle must be designed to be assembled by
Microfactories. If you take a normal car today, only to make the body system, you need to have at least 1000 robots. In our case, all assembly
processes less than 70 robots.
The brief was really clear from the start. 'How do we build vehicles at price parity with a conventional diesel vehicle?' Now what that means when
you're putting a large, expensive heavy battery into a vehicle is that you need to make the body system lighter and lower cost. If you were to take a
conventional steel panel and compare it to ours, then we're less than half the weight. The materials that we're developing are thermoplastic based
composites, and we can recycle those an infinite number of times.
We have far higher ductility and what that means is the panel rebounds from impact. So rather than having to repair or replace, our panels actually
survive much longer out in the field, massively reducing the potential repair bills for our customers.
When you look at our elements and components, they're modular, they're based on a ten by ten grid, they're stackable, they're plug and play. It's
amazing. Designing our products ourselves, owning the IP, giving us the ability to upgrade that, prioritise the products that we need. It's easy
installation, easy replacement, agility for the future.
We invented grid based components, new material technologies, to do the body systems, and a new software to manage our factories, and also in
vehicle software. So if you combine all those things together, Microfactories, components, materials, and the software, those are enabling
technologies which makes it possible to make best in class vehicles.
We always get the question 'why commercial vehicles first?' and it's actually because it's an underserved market. So right now you have very few
vehicles that you can go and get and you're not able to do anything bespoke or custom with those vehicles, you get what you get. It's a market that
cares about the total cost of operating which electric vehicles enable and Arrival further enhances that. And then it's a growing market. It's a large
segment, there's 2 million vans by 2025, a total addressable market over 280 billion and Arrival has the best in class product, we're able to scale
rapidly, we're able to really use the technologies to enable these customers to improve their operations. We can work with cities and
customers and we can create those at any volume, again using the same Microfactory, so it's a win-win on both sides.
It's a perfect time for companies like us to step into this industry and actually change it. We found a way how to break the role of economy of
scale. We have much better product, green product, but it also has better pricing as well. This perfect combination where you don't need to have a
compromise between being green or being efficient. So with our products it comes together.