Commercial electric vehicle startup Arrival's business continues to unravel.
Arrival announced on Monday in a regulatory document that its UK division is entering administration, the country's version of bankruptcy. The troubled company, which went public in 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, said it is looking to sell its assets and intellectual property in the United Kingdom to pay off lenders that helped it stay afloat.
The push toward administration comes just a week after Nasdaq announced it would delist the startup's shares from its stock exchange, and just under a year after Arrival raised a $300 million lifeline in an attempt to turn the business around.
Arrival says other subsidiaries outside the UK will continue to operate, but the company did not explain what that means. More than 170 jobs are at risk in the UK alone. according to the Financial Times.
Once valued at more than $13 billion and backed by Hyundai and UPS, Arrival made big claims about how it was going to revolutionize the way electric vehicles are made. Today, Arrival is valued at about $9 million.
The center of their vision for electric vehicles involved building electric commercial vans and buses in extremely compact “microfactories” that could be located in city centers. Those plans never came to fruition as the company continually wasted money, while also taking on a wide range of projects such as an electric bus and a car specially designed for Uber. Arrival also went through several executives and restructured at least three times, laying off workers in each case.
In 2022, Arrival shifted its focus to the United States and moved away from the UK market, where it is based and where the first electric vans were supposed to be delivered. The turnaround was part of a restructuring aimed at preserving capital. However, that has also failed, as Arrival has been unable to produce and deliver commercial vehicles.
