London-based EV manufacturer ArrivaL has presented a fully working prototype of the small all-electric city vehicle it has been developing in collaboration with ride-hailing company Uber. The Arrival Car is designed specifically for use in the ride-hailing sector.
As such, we meet a vehicle that’s designed to maximize comfort for passengers and provide good views. So the Arrival Car features a fully glass roof, big windows and tons of space for passengers’ legs and smaller bags and whatnot.
Arrival has been active in developing EV technologies for use in vans, buses and other vehicle types besides passenger vehicles, mainly for global markets. But it has implanted itself in North America in the past year, setting up a second HQ in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it also plans to build both a small factory to build vans and a battery assembly plant. It has also been working on autonomous drive technologies and has a working prototype of a self-driving van that has already gone through driver-less testing.
This past May, Arrival announced it was partnering with Uber to produce an EV specifically for rideshare drivers, with an eye mostly to the European and British markets. Barely six months later, here is the result. The company says the Car features twice as much legroom as the average vehicle of the same length and is designed to handle the annual 45-50,000 km ride-share drivers put on their vehicle on average (this is compared to the 12,000 km racked up by the average passenger vehicle.
Odds of seeing this specialized EV in our Canadian cities are still, for the moment, fairly small. But the fact that Arrival is putting money into setting up in North America means it’s not inconceivable that it could decide that what’s good for Europe might be good for our continent. After all, there is a fair number of Uber drivers out there in Canada and the U.S., we can all agree.
