In the world of electric vehicles, there’s Tesla and then there’s everyone else. Elon Musk’s company has dominated the EV market since the first Roadster rolled off the line over a decade ago. Tesla proved that a scrappy startup could take on the major automakers and win. But Tesla’s success has been an outlier in an industry where new entrants face monumental barriers to entry.
This truth has been all too real for Arrival, the British electric vehicle maker that filed for bankruptcy protection this week without ever selling a single car.
Arrival’s story is a cautionary tale of big dreams running headfirst into auto industry realities. The company set out to build electric delivery vans, buses and rideshare vehicles with a noble mission to fight climate change. But passionate ideals couldn’t overcome the massive capital, scale and manufacturing expertise needed to actually produce vehicles.
In the end, Arrival burned through over $500 million in investment capital without tangible results. The company’s assets will now be sold off in a desperate attempt to recoup some value for creditors. Employees in the UK have already been laid off.
It’s a dramatic fall for a company that just two years ago had a $13 billion valuation on the Nasdaq stock exchange. So what went wrong for the British EV startup? And what can other aspiring auto disrupters learn from Arrival’s failure to launch?
A Promising Start Turns Sour
Arrival has been around for over a decade, starting off in 2015 as Charge Auto. The company set out to design electric vehicles tailored specifically for the commercial market. Instead of replication passenger cars, Arrival planned to build electric delivery vans, buses and vehicles for ride-hailing services.
This commercial vehicle focus helped the company gain traction in a field littered with bankrupt EV startups. Arrival secured investment from major companies like Hyundai, BlackRock and United Parcel Service.
UPS even committed to buying 10,000 of Arrival’s electric vans in what appeared to be a major vote of confidence. With tens of billions of dollars in capital flowing into the EV sector, Arrival’s future looked bright.
The company gained more prominence by going public through a SPAC merger in March 2021. The transaction put an astounding $13 billion valuation on the startup that hadn’t yet sold anything. Public investors, eager to find the next Tesla, didn’t seem to mind Arrival’s lack of actual revenue.
But turning hype into reality requires more than just a slick prototype vehicle or flashy investor presentation. The auto industry is littered with the corpses of startups that wilted under the brutal demands of mass production.
And despite all the buzz around Arrival, the company hemorrhaged cash while struggling to turn its concepts into physical vehicles.
Burning Cash With No Vehicles Produced
According to Arrival’s latest earnings report, the company has spent over $500 million in cash since 2021 with very little to show for it. The expected production targets have been repeatedly delayed and downsized.
For example, Arrival originally projected it would make 400 electric vans by the end of 2021. That figure was slashed to 50 vans, but the company didn’t make any. In 2022, Arrival adjusted its full-year forecast down to just 50-100 vans from an original target of 5,000.
It’s an old story of EV startups finding it infinitely harder to mass produce vehicles compared to flashy computer renderings. Tesla experienced its own production hell trying to ramp up Model 3 output. But at least Tesla had gotten cars to market before. Arrival continually moved the goalposts without finished vehicles it could sell.
The company burned through its cash reserves rapidly as overhead costs piled up. By January 2023, Arrival was down to just $200 million in cash. It managed to raise $50 million in a desperate capital infusion, but that only stemmed the bleeding temporarily.
Unable to produce revenue-generating vehicles, costs far outpaced Arrival’s dwindling finances. With major investors like UPS and Hyundai losing patience, writing was on the wall.
In February, Arrival got delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange after shares cratered to below $1. Then this week the final shoe dropped with bankruptcy proceedings in the UK.
What Went Wrong for Arrival?
Arrival’s failure can’t be chalked up to lack of demand. Commercial electric vehicles are a hot growth market, and Arrival targeted useful products for a real-world need. But turning early buzz into mature, scaled-up manufacturing proved impossible.
Like many EV startups, Arrival touted flashy computer-generated prototypes and sleek investor presentations highlighting the massive addressable market. But having a sexy CGI van is much easier than actually building one en masse.
And therein lies the problem. Arrival tried to reinvent the commercial vehicle production process from the ground up. This involved building in-house everything from motors to batteries to auto assembly methods. It was an admirably ambitious goal but required expertise and capital far beyond Arrival’s means.
In the cutthroat auto industry, manufacturing prowess is impossible to develop overnight. Incumbent automakers have a century of cumulative knowledge honing the craft of building vehicles efficiently at scale. Mastering the factory side of the business separated winners from losers.
Arrival’s original plan called for decentralized microfactories. By using local microfactories tailored to each location, the company claimed it could cut costs by 30%. In reality, the concept struggled to work and was eventually scrapped in favor of traditional large factories.
It was a big blow because Arrival’s micofactories were supposed to be its strategic advantage. The company found that prototyping novel assembly methods at small scale proved far more challenging than expected.
Without its own factories, Arrival relied on third-party contract manufacturers. But its vehicle designs changed frequently as concepts that looked good on paper didn’t pan out in physical testing. This created tension with the contract manufacturers accustomed to more mature designs.
Ultimately the manufacturing side of the equation overwhelmed the young startup. Arrival couldn’t scale up production without in-house factories optimized for its unique vehicle architectures. The capital required to build even one full-size auto plant can run into the billions.
Starry-eyed optimism gave way to the cold reality that manufacturing vehicles is incredibly hard and expensive. When the money ran out, Arrival ran out of lifelines.
Cautionary Tale for Other EV Startups
Arrival’s bankruptcy is the latest in a string of electric vehicle flameouts.
In 2022, hybrid truck maker Lordstown Motors crashed after making all sorts of unsupported claims. Electric bus maker Proterra lost billions of dollars before being sold in a fire sale. Battery startups BritishVolt and Enovix also filed for bankruptcy as developing new battery tech proved costlier than anticipated.
The common thread is new entrants underestimating the sheer complexity of auto manufacturing. Designing a concept car with cool AI features or novel motors is the easy part. Building thousands of those vehicles per week at mass-market cost is another matter.
Tesla only escaped a similar fate by continually raising billions of capital ahead of actually needing it. The company also made all its vehicles in-house right from the start. Owning the entire vehicle manufacturing process was key to scaling up successfully.
Arrival tried to outsource core functions like production facilities while also reinventing the manufacturing process from scratch. That left little margin for error. When cash reserves started dwindling, Arrival had no factories to fall back on nor established manufacturing pipeline.
The developing EV market will continue attracting ambitious new players, as it should. But startups must enter with eyes wide open to the daunting realities of the auto business. Building vehicles is supremely difficult and requires billions in capital over many years just to have a chance.
Arrival’s uncontrolled crash shows what happens when hype outpaces reality. Tesla’s success was an anomaly, not the norm. Future EV makers should take not that going big too fast without manufacturing basics in place is a recipe for failure.
