Almost all its startup rivals have suffered similar plunges, but Arrival is arguably a special case. The company is trying to move fast – launching a van, a bus and a car at the same time – and break the traditional industry model, using robot-controlled “microfactories” that it hopes will bounce manufacturers from the Henry Ford age to the iPhone era.
Given that iPhones are in fact all made (OK, some in India now, some in Brazil behind the tariff walls, but) in vast sheds in China, all there so as to gain massive volume, that’s not quite right now, is it?
The vans are made up of about 30 “Lego block” sub-assemblies,
What they’ve really done is remained with mass manufacturing to make the sub-assemblies. The assembly part, well, OK, that’s done on the small scale. It’s possibly interesting but it’s not as revolutionary as it’s written up as being.
“the iPhone era.”
Underspecced, overpriced, overhyped, and proprietary-only?
If this electric van works, how are they going to compete with Ford, Mercedes, VW who also make vans?
This short lead time thing sounds cool and all, but modifying a line to go from petrol to electric isn’t a 7 year job. A lot of the things you do for an electric vehicle are the same as a petrol one, like weld, paint, fitting the dash (which is pre-assembled), fitting windscreen, seats, lights.
I don’t know if those large companies are doing them, but if they prove the market for electric vans, the current players will rapidly start making them and have the scale and reputation to beat them.
It’s more like: moving to the laser printer era. When I first started out, you cut a duplication master and you got 2000 leaflets, and that was it, the master was worn out. (If you were lucky, the printer had an electric crank.) If you miscounted, or needed more, it was another master and another 2000. With a laser printer, I can – as I have just done now – do a spot run of six leaflets.
I expect the building-block cars is similar cost differences as well. In fifteen seconds I can run off 50 leaflets, but at laser printer costs. If I have the time to wait three days I can get up to 8000 from the commercial printers down the road much cheaper on per-item cost. Trading immediacy for total cost.
What it seems they can do is to produce exactly what the customer wants in small runs, which would otherwise require buying some standardised product, and stripping it down first. A bit like the difference between having a hand-made shirt, or going to M&S, buying one off the peg and taking it to a tailor to undo all the seams, re-cut the pieces and sew them up again. Doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me.
@jgh, alas, I knew those systems well – from typing on ‘skins’ or spirit copiers like the Banda machine. My first laser printer cost £4k, and fortunately, it was 300dpi not the original laserwriter’s £7k and 75dpi. My current laser printer cost less than a set of toner cartridges, so a good strategy is to keep buying new printers and throw away the old ones when the toner runs out. The costs of running a home printer are ridiculous relative to a printshop, and you just have to understand that you are paying for convenience.
jgh,
“I expect the building-block cars is similar cost differences as well. In fifteen seconds I can run off 50 leaflets, but at laser printer costs. If I have the time to wait three days I can get up to 8000 from the commercial printers down the road much cheaper on per-item cost. Trading immediacy for total cost.”
I guess. It just seems to me that vans aren’t really that different. Sure, you may fit different stuff in the back, but they’re essentially the same. And car makers already manage to fit cars with different types of seats or trim in large production.
“good strategy is to keep buying new printers and throw away the old ones when the toner runs out.”
Nope. They don’t give you a full toner with a new printer any more. They give you a “starter” one that’s good for just a very few pages. Then you have to shell out.
Why do they call it toner, why not just ink?
In a laser printer it’s a dry powder, not a liquid ink…..
I’ve done the factory tour at Triumph motorcycles at Hinckley. One of the things that was mentioned was a flexible system that involved building different models on the same line. The normal process involves taking an educated guess as to how many of each model will be sold in the coming year and then doing a production run of each one. If one model proved more popular than expected you would lose sales when the supply ran out. If one model didn’t sell so well then you were stuck with them or had to discount them to shift them. Triumph claimed that their system allowed them to do short runs to fill gaps and to quickly switch away from producing ones that were becoming less popular.
@jgh
Gesteners?
Father had one and I enjoyed turning the handle and seeing things come out. Liked the ink smell too
A major cost for a vehicle is the homologation/certification and all this powerpointesque hype can’t really provide any advantage cost/time wise when it comes to this.
How many are they hoping to sell and for how much? It’s a van, and I understand it’s the likes of the post office they’re aiming at. Bugatti veyron pricing not really an option.
Ditto musk cult groupies as customers. Businesses are likely to be somewhat more desirous of getting what is actually claimed on the tin.
I wonder if they’re expecting the usual pass that anything “green” seems to require in the real world?
I suspect that the real claim is in how much cash is required upfront, from investors, and time, to get the product out of the door.
The article gives the “Henry Ford Age” manufacturers as working on five to seven year time frames. VC funding rounds happen quicker than that – particularly if you have a high burn rate.
Autocar give the cost of an upgrade to the existing Toyota production line at Burnaston as £240million. Arrival claim they can build a plant for £38m, one sixth the cost, in a year.
It’s about extracting the cash from investors quickly, and getting them a return, or possibly just a milestone, swiftly.
Arrival claim the capacity of these microfactories is 10,000 vehicles a year, 27 a day or smidgeon over one per hour. Burnaston can sling out a Corolla or whatever in 89 seconds, apparently.
According to the article, Arrival have a 60,000 vehicle order from UPS, possibly an order from Uber on the horizon. This a niche manufacturer, that might be able to ramp up and down quickly, and also switch between models or types relatively swiftly. But I suspect the options per vehicle are extremely limited, and that variations between types are limited as well. Depends on the modules.