EV Start-up to Assemble Batteries in North Carolina

CHARLOTTE, NC—A startup maker of electric delivery vans and buses will add yet another assembly plant here—it’s third in the city and fourth in the region.

Arrival, founded in the U.K. in 2015, announced its debut U.S. facility—an electric bus “microfactory”—in nearby Rock Hill, SC, in late 2020. The company subsequently announced Charlotte as the home of its U.S. headquarters and unveiled plans for an electric van production site on the city’s west side last spring.

Now, Arrival has announced plans for another facility in West Charlotte, which will assemble high-voltage battery modules for the company’s nearby EV assembly plants. The $11.5 million project is expected to add another 150 jobs to the company’s regional workforce.

Arrival officials said in-house production of its proprietary battery modules would enable the company 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,” says Arrival Automotive CEO Mike Ableson.

The ASSEMBLY Show South

ASSEMBLY is thrilled to return to the Music City Center in Nashville, TN for The ASSEMBLY Show SOUTH on May 1-2, 2024. This is a booming time for manufacturing and the U.S. South is right in the heart of the action. According to ASSEMBLY’s most recent annual capital spending survey, the South is projected to account for 31 percent of total spending this year, marking the fifth straight year this region has accounted for at least 30 percent of capital spending in the U.S.

In this session, manufacturers will learn how Quality function deployment (QFD) can transform consumers’ qualitative demands into quantitative parameters that will shape the design of their product and, ultimately, their manufacturing process.

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