Arrival to build battery assembly plant in Charlotte
The British electric vehicle developer Arrival is building an assembly plant for high-voltage battery modules for use in its vans and buses in Charlotte, North Carolina. Arrival is investing about 11.5 million US dollars in the plant.
Arrival’s High Voltage Battery Module (HVBM) assembly plant will service the company’s nearby micro-factories. These are located in Rock Hill, South Carolina and Charlotte, North Carolina and produce electric buses and vans respectively. The HVBM plant will create 150 new jobs.
Arrival assembles its own proprietary battery modules. These can be used in all of its platforms. This means that customers can configure their own battery requirements according to their specific use cases. The fact that the British company has created an in-house design obviously means that it fits nicely within its own plug-and-play hardware and software architecture. The company says that this allows for scalability, upgradability and ease of repairs and maintenance.
“By bringing the assembly of our proprietary High Voltage Battery Modules in house, we’re striving to be as vertically integrated as possible. This will enable us to have even greater control over the functionality and cost of our products and pass those cost savings on to the customer while also working toward our goal of zero waste production,” said Mike Ableson, CEO of Arrival Automotive.
Charlotte is also where Arrival is locating its US headquarters and is also to be the site of the second US micro-factory, which will initially manufacture the 10,000 electric transporters that UPS ordered from the company in January 2020.
Here Ableson explained: “We’re excited to add another facility in Charlotte, as we prepare to open our new North American Headquarters building just down the road and continue to work in tandem with the City to develop solutions for their electrification and sustainability goals. This is a big milestone for Arrival as we ramp up operations in the region in advance of production starting in Rock Hill in Q2 next year.”
Just over a week ago, Arrival announced that it had entered into a cooperation with Li-Cycle for the recycling of used batteries from Arrival’s electric vehicle fleets in the USA and Europe.
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