ArrivalVan

01

Origins

Arrival's electric van of 2021 was briefly Britain's most valuable automotive idea: a modular composite-bodied delivery vehicle designed for cell-based 'microfactories' rather than conventional lines, with UPS holding an order for 10,000 and a SPAC listing valuing the startup in the billions. The engineering premise — cheap local plants, no paint shop, no stamping — attacked vehicle manufacturing's deepest cost assumptions. Execution consumed cash faster than vans emerged; a handful of production examples ran trials before restructuring cascaded into 2024's collapse and asset sales. The Van thus enters the record as the EV bubble's most instructive British artefact: a genuinely novel manufacturing thesis, validated by blue-chip customers, destroyed by the distance between prototype and cadence.