Arrival is halting work on its electric bus and car projects

Anglo-American electric car company Arrival is freezing its innovative bus and car projects as it struggles to manage its cash reserves. Financial Times reports that the company, which said it would lay off a third of its staff last month, will now focus on completing its delivery van. Arrival said it has up to 20,000 UPS orders for the vehicle and expects to get the first models out the door later this year. This is hoped to ease pressure on the company’s bottom line and boost its share price, which has fallen 90 percent since it went public through a SPAC last year.

The company was unable to comment to Engadget on the FT report as it prepares to release its financial results this week.

Arrival has actually started with its electric bus project and has already built several models ready to be tested in real conditions. Its car, designed to be sold to ride-sharing drivers, was in the prototype stage (I saw it firsthand last December), and the company had hired Uber’s Tom Elvidge to run the program. The FT report says both projects are on hold for now and are likely to be revived as soon as Arrival starts making money. However, the car project may find itself squeezed by the looming recession and that so much venture capital money that was poured into transportation startups like Uber has already dried up, leading to a wave of closures.

The biggest tragedy of all is that Arrival’s focus on revolutionizing public buses was a really different approach than most EV manufacturers. Buses are part of almost every city, and while it’s always better for the environment to use one instead of a car, making them even cleaner was a great plan. That the public project has been frozen in favor of a fleet of logistics vans is not surprising, but it certainly does not bode well for the future of public transport.