Electric Vehicle Company Announces $11.5 Million High-voltage Battery Module Assembly Plant in North Carolina

A startup maker of electric delivery vans and buses will add yet another facility in Charlotte, North Carolina — 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, South Carolina, 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. In early December 2021, Arrival announced plans for another facility in West Charlotte, which will supply high-voltage battery modules to 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,” Arrival Automotive CEO Mike Ableson said in the announcement.