Arrival Plug & Play Newsletter: Volume 2

4 min readMar 22, 2021

Welcome to the second Arrival newsletter.

This second edition brings you a round up of this week’s news and answers a few of your questions in #AskArrivalAnything. We are excited to welcome Tom Elvidge to the Arrival team as our new CEO of Arrival Mobility in the UK and share a behind the scenes look at how we produce our proprietary composite materials.

Quick Charge

Everything you need to know for the week

Arrival expands executive leadership team
Arrival has announced the hiring of Tom Elvidge as the CEO of Arrival Mobility in the UK, overseeing the growth of Arrival’s mobility service offerings. Tom brings invaluable automotive and tech experience from his former role as the General Manager for Uber UK & Ireland.

Electrifying Public Transport
Listen to the Fast Forward podcast as Greg Lindsay chats with Arrival President Avinash Rugoobur.

Super Materials for the Next Generation of Electric Vehicles
The question is simple: with our knowledge of material technology, how would we design vehicles to be lighter, less expensive, more durable and fully recyclable? Chief of Materials, Rob Thompson, explores how Arrival is creating game-changing materials for our products.

r/AskArrivalAnything

“Disruptive, innovative, challenging — brilliant to see. Provides flexibility and agility. Would love to know of the challenges faced in implementation and day to day operational activity, or has it all been plain sailing?”

We don’t think anyone transforming an entire sector as established as the automotive industry could describe the journey as ‘plain sailing’. The great thing about being a start up is that we can try things, fail, fix them and move forwards — quickly. That’s what we have spent 5 years doing in stealth mode — developing our technologies, challenging the status quo, creating the best possible systems and products we can. Because Arrival designs many of its own components and uses production processes with lower capital expenditure and shorter lead times than the traditional automotive industry, the “velocity” at which we can iterate and improve our products is far higher than traditional OEMs.

“When it comes to the development and deployment of these microfactories in communities across the globe, will Arrival commit to up skilling and educating local people to be able to operate the equipment in these factories?”

Yes — revitilisation of local communities is one of the biggest benefits of Microfactories. In contrast to a giant traditional OEM factory that has to be built outside of populous areas, we can place our Microfactories in existing warehouses near urban areas to provide jobs for local people. In addition, we plan to utilise local supply chains as far as possible, further enhancing local industry and creating additional jobs. We are also working with local authorities to engage local community colleges for training programs.

“Looks really good, but don’t forget that Tesla went from aluminum to steel to lower costs. Doesn’t that worry you? In addition to that I’m aware of an EU funded study that concluded that from a cost perspective at least going from steel to aluminum and lighter materials wasn’t worth it.”

At Arrival, we are driven by weight and cost, but also by flexibility. Our composite panels are 50% lighter than steel, and our manufacturing process avoids colossal metal stamping equipment which not only costs tens of millions to set up, but would be a significant limitation on our ability to change designs rapidly and scale our Microfactories to meet local demand. Aluminium raw materials are more expensive than steel, but the difference in terms of overall vehicle manufacturing cost is less. But, manufacturing and material cost is not the whole story. The effect of mass reduction on vehicle efficiency and environmental impact during use is considerable. A comparison of overall lifecycle cost typically shows a net benefit through using lighter materials.

To submit a question to r/AskArrivalAnything send us a message on Twitter or Facebook using #AskArrivalAnything. As we continue to develop solutions for cities that help drive sustainability goals, your questions, feedback and comments form a critical part of the process.