Hyundai and Kia have announced an £85m investment in UK-based electric van maker – and LowCVP member – Arrival.
The money will be used by Arrival to scale up production of its electric van targeted at the commercial vehicle market. It comes days after Arrival announced a huge ev van order from UPS in the United States.
Arrival’s first product is a battery-powered electric van, priced at the same level as comparable petrol or diesel vehicles. The van is targeted at urban delivery, which doesn’t have the longer range needs that today’s battery technology can struggle to meet. Prototype vans have already been trialled by delivery companies including Royal Mail, DHL and DPD, as well as BT.
Arrival has developed most of the vehicle itself, including software, components, materials and a modular “skateboard” platform. The company says it also has a longer-term ambition to enter the more competitive market for passenger cars.
Electric vehicles can be successfully integrated into the national grid service.
A Government-backed taskforce bringing together key players in the energy, infrastructure and transport sectors has demonstrated that an effectively managed integration of electric vehicles with the energy system can significantly improve electricity network efficiency, increase system resilience and limit the requirement to build costly new infrastructure to meet growing electricity demand.
The Electric Vehicle (EV) Energy Taskforce was established in 2018 to make proposals to Government and industry to bring together the auto and energy sectors to ensure that the GB energy system is able to accelerate the mass take-up of electric vehicles while also delivering benefits to the electricity system.
The infrastructure spending required to prepare the UK electricity networks for the electric vehicle transition is likely to run to tens of billions of pounds . However, the Taskforce believes this cost can be significantly reduced if the right decisions are made and the transition is effectively coordinated between government and key energy, infrastructure and transport industry stakeholders. A prior study put this figure at between £2.7bn and £6.5bn.