British electric vehicle (EV) startup Arrival has announced that they laying off half of its workforce that will halve the company’s cash operating expenses in a bid to help keep it afloat. While the company is laying off about 800 workers, it is also gaining a new one in the form of a new CEO.
Arrival announced on Monday that Igor Torgov is their new CEO, who takes over the lead role after working as the company’s EVP of Digital since February 2020.
“Following a detailed review of its operations and its markets, Arrival is now announcing immediate actions to further reduce its operating costs and to optimize the deployment of its current cash resources. This includes the difficult decision to reduce its global workforce by approximately 50% to 800 employees. When combined with other cost reductions in real estate and third-party spending, the company expects to halve the ongoing cash cost of operating the business to approximately $30 million per quarter,” the company said in a press release.
The layoffs come after Arrival already reduced its workforce by 30%, laying off some 800 of their 2,500 workers last year. That decision was made to cope with challenging economic conditions and were intended to help Arrival reduce its expenses by 30% and reach its targets through 2023.
That was not enough as Arrival then warned in November that it may not have enough cash to continue operating through 2023.
The company went public through the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) route in March 2021 and planned to manufacture electric delivery vans using smaller, less expensive hubs. Its stock lost 80 percent in 2022 alone and is yet to record a profit. Arrival ended 2022 with $205 million in cash.
