Arrival’s Avinash Rugoobur will reveal an electric vehicle made in collaboration with Uber TC Sessions
- ByStartupStory | April 11, 2022
At TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 in San Mateo, California, on May 18-19, Avinash Rugoobur, president of Arrival, will sit down with us for a fireside conversation alongside a prototype of the car developed for Uber drivers. While the upcoming vehicle will be the focus of the conversation, expect to hear about Arrival’s interest in the commercial vehicle market and its microfactory plans, as well as its future products and whether it can quickly ramp up vehicle production to convert its many non-binding orders and letters of intent (LOI).
Arrival, an electric vehicle business located in the United Kingdom that went public last year, has set an ambitious aim for itself. The company wants to make electric vehicles that are less expensive than other EVs and compete with the prices of fossil-fuel automobiles. A big aim necessitates a big strategy. For Arrival, this means foregoing major automakers’ usual large-scale or even “giga-sized” factories in favor of a considerably smaller and decentralized strategy. By 2024, Arrival wants to establish 31 microfactories, including one in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Arrival claims that these microfactories enable the company to target specific markets while keeping costs down. Trip-hailing is one of these marketplaces. Arrival said last year that it would collaborate with Uber to create, design, and manufacture a low-cost, purpose-built electric vehicle for ride-hailing. Drivers have even been urged to sign up for the vehicle’s design system, which is expected to go into production in Q3 2023.
Arrival is a fast-growing electric vehicle startup focusing on clean, urban mobility, and its unique manufacturing technology has the potential to set a new standard for sustainable and cost-effective EV manufacture. Since its inception in 2015, the firm has released an all-electric passenger bus, a delivery van, and a rideshare-specific automobile developed in collaboration with Uber.
Rugoobur led GM’s $1 billion acquisition of Cruise before joining Arrival, and he was part of the team that saw the company’s value rise to $14 billion. This effort was crucial in hastening the supply of AVs and establishing the OEM/startup ecosystem.
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