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These lower-cost EVs open the way to “accelerated mass adoption globally.” Arrival expects to generate some $14bn in revenue by 2024, reports Forbes.
Arrival has now positioned itself as a full-fledged EV manufacturer, “challenging the 100-year old automotive production process.” The company has designed “low capex, low footprint Microfactories” utilising “in-house proprietary technologies and advanced cell-based assembly method.”
Designed to produce any vehicle from Arrival’s portfolio, these Microfactories can be deployed “anywhere in the world within six months, using existing warehouses close to areas of demand.”
Arrival has inked contracts with operators of delivery vans under competitive pressure to go green. “UPS has ordered 10,000 battery-powered commercial vans worth $1bn; the vehicles are expected to be on the road by late 2021,” reports Forbes. The company claims its vans will be lighter, more spacious, more energy-efficient and roughly twice as cheap as their rivals, which include the Ford Transit and the Mercedes Sprinter.
Among the firms’ products are also public transport buses. Not only do they promise to lower carbon emissions: they may also enhance passengers’ protection by employing social distancing measures inside the vehicles. Announced back in June last year, the Arrival Bus has “an adjustable interior to allow for passengers to follow protective measures while travelling and minimise the risk of either contracting or spreading the novel coronavirus,” notes Russia Beyond.
Stock of Poland’s CD Projekt swings wildly in wake of GameStop battle
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
The shares of Poland’s gaming giant CD Projekt – the company behind Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher – soared by close to 50% on the Warsaw Stock Exchange only to tank nearly 16% on January 29, its volatility a side effect of the army of small investors in the US trying to hit short-selling hedge funds.
While the retail investors in the US – who banded together
on Reddit – targeted stocks of less-known companies such as game retailer GameStop, some of the hedge funds that shorted the company also had short positions on CD Projekt.
$13.6bn for yet-to-be-made vehicles
As of November 2020, Arrival has reported signed contracts with a total order value up to $1.2bn. Its first products are planned for production in Q4 2021.
“There are more than 560 cities in the world which have
a population of over 1mn people, and each of these cities
could have a microfactory producing 10,000 vehicles specifically tailored for the needs of that market,” Sverdlov was quoted as say- ing. “This model can be as scalable as McDonald’s or Starbucks.”
Sverdlov’s fund was Arrival’s only shareholder until new investors jumped in last year. These investors include BlackRock Innovation Capital, Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors Corporation, UPS Ventures and Winter Capital. The latter is a Moscow-based international fund backed, in particular, by billionaire Vladimir Potanin.
Arrival went public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company called CIIC Merger Corp – following the example of several other EV start-ups, as noted by CrunchBase. These companies include DraftKings, Nikola, Virgin Galactic (2020) as well as EVgo, Joby Aviation, Lilium Air Mobility, Lucid Motors, Proterra, Xos (announced).
The SPAC transaction between Arrival and CIIC was agreed in November last year. The combined company became publicly listed on Thursday, March 25 at $22.40 per share, bringing gross proceeds of $660mn and securing a $13.6bn valuation. This brought Sverdlov’s fortune to $10.6bn, according to Forbes.
A week later, on April 1, the stock price had sunk to $16.24.
That aroused interest in the Polish company, alongside, as it happened, a tweet by none other than Elon Musk sporting
a picture of a Tesla with CD Projekt’s The Witcher on-screen and an appreciative remark about Cyberpunk 2077.
CD Projekt's shares soared as investors poured in, and then corrected afterwards.
But unlike Gamestop and other nearly forgotten companies such as Blackberry or Nokia that the Redditors targeted in
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