Connect with us
arrival-van arrival-van

News

EV startup Arrival appoints new CEO, posts plan to lay off 50% of its workforce

Image Credit: Arrival/Twitter

Published

on

UK-based electric vehicle startup Arrival has announced plans to lay off half of its workforce as part of its efforts to cut costs. The company also named Igor Torgov as its new CEO. Prior to his appointment as CEO, Torgov served as the executive vice president of digital at the electric vehicle company.

Arrival, which was founded in 2015, has been developing electric delivery vans for UPS, ride-hailing cars for Uber, and zero-emission public buses. The company has received support from Hyundai and Kia, and it went public after via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in March 2021. 

Arrival is not the only electric vehicle startup that’s seeing challenges as of late. Other EV startups have also been struggling to keep pace with industry leader Tesla’s pace and momentum. These include Rivian and Nikola, both of which have implemented cost-cutting measures of their own over the past year.  

Following its 50% workforce reduction, Arrival expects to have about 800 employees. The company predicts that the move would reduce its operating costs to approximately $30 million per quarter. Arrival also noted in a press release that it has $205 million in cash remaining as of the end of 2022.

New Arrival CEO Igor Torgov shared some of his thoughts about the company’s changes in a statement

“Accepting this important role at a critical point in Arrival’s journey is a significant responsibility. Arrival has developed unique technologies in a market that has huge growth potential and can play a key role in addressing climate change. To unlock these opportunities, we need to make difficult decisions and to take swift action. 

“Following a detailed evaluation of Arrival and the wider EV market during the past two months, the leadership team and the Board have taken decisive action to ensure the most effective use of our current resources and optimize the efficiency of the business. 

Advertisement
-
-

“The actions support our journey to become a champion in innovative products and new, more efficient methods of vehicle production, particularly in the important US market for commercial electric vehicles. We are keenly aware that these decisions, while necessary, will have a profound impact on a significant number of our colleagues. We are 100% committed to supporting our employees during this difficult process,” Torgov said. 

The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, contact me at maria@teslarati.com or via Twitter @Writer_01001101.

Maria--aka "M"-- is an experienced writer and book editor. She's written about several topics including health, tech, and politics. As a book editor, she's worked with authors who write Sci-Fi, Romance, and Dark Fantasy. M loves hearing from TESLARATI readers. If you have any tips or article ideas, contact her at maria@teslarati.com or via X, @Writer_01001101.

Advertisement
Comments

News

Tesla Semi gets its largest order yet

Published

on

Credit: Einride

Tesla got its largest order for the all-electric Class 8 Semi yet, a 500-unit order from Einride AB, a Swedish trucking company.

Einride made the announcement this morning following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said it plans to use 500 Tesla Semi units on its fleet intelligence platform, called Saga AI. The deployments will serve large companies like Amazon and will extend Einride’s electric freight network across logistics routes in California, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.

The deployment is being carried out in several phases over the next two years as Tesla ramps production of the Semi at its dedicated production facility in Sparks, Nevada. Einride will receive its first Semi units in September.

Saga AI

Saga AI is Einride’s dedicated fleet intelligence platform. It enables scaled adoption of electric trucks for freight use and allows shippers to integrate electric capacity without the operational burden or capital risks of managing a fleet. This helps integrate cost-efficient logistics and makes budgeting and forecasting much more accurate.

Tesla Semi’s Adoption

The Tesla Semi is now gathering large-scale clients past those who have helped the company operate a Pilot Program to gain initial information and feedback from real-world drivers.

Perhaps the biggest and most notable is that of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo., who have worked with Tesla for the past several years to dial in the finer details of the truck, including its efficiency and operation-related components.

Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno

There has been tremendous progress in that time, and it even catalyzed Tesla to make some design changes, which were unveiled earlier this year.

But Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli says his company’s partnership with Tesla will continue to push those things forward:

“This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand. Working closely with Tesla to bring next-generation Semis into active operations quickly and at scale is a testament to the strength of that partnership, and how quickly this technology is maturing from promise to daily operations.”

Tesla Semi is already winning over truck drivers

Additionally, Dan Priestley, the Director of the Semi Program at Tesla, said the partnership is ideal due to Einride’s focus on sustainable transport:

“Einride is at the forefront of sustainable freight, and we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with them through this order of 500 Semis. EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks. These savings increase further through operational efficiency when deploying EV trucks at scale, and we are excited that Einride recognizes this and look forward to supporting their deployments.” 

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update

Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.

Published

on

By

Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.

On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.

India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.

Elon Musk shares details on X vs. Brazil conflict

The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.

This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.

Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla Cybercab launch preparations have begun

Published

on

Credit: TechOperator | X

Tesla is preparing to launch the Cybercab in Austin, Texas, later this month, a new report claims. Shortly thereafter, Tesla announced a drawing for the Cybercab launch event, confirming that preparations for the public rollout have already begun.

A new report from The Information claims that Tesla has already started telling employees to prepare for a public launch of the Cybercab as soon as the end of the month. The vehicle will launch publicly to riders in Austin initially.

The two-seater has no pedals or steering wheel, and will rely completely on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to operate.

While the report went unconfirmed from Tesla, the company launched a lottery to ride in a Cybercab at an upcoming launch event, essentially confirming that preparations are underway:

Cybercab entered production at Gigafactory Texas back in April, with initial units being test mules for the company as it has put the car in a variety of environments and climates. Tesla has sent Cybercab to many states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Washington, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

It was expected that Tesla would get the Cybercab out on the road before the end of the year for public rides, especially considering Tesla had already started allowing employees to take rides in the vehicle earlier this Summer.

Tesla starts testing its Starlink-integrated Cybercab on public roads

This is a huge development, not only with the Cybercab program, but for Tesla’s self-driving program. Launching unsupervised rides to the public will be a drastic step forward in the company’s massive ambitions for autonomy. It is a long time coming, too. Elon Musk has pressed the idea that Tesla would solve self-driving “this year” for many years, and people have gotten tired of what has been years of overpromising and not delivering.

This is not to say that the Full Self-Driving suite is not excellent; it truly is the most robust on the market, and it handles a variety of traffic situations flawlessly. It definitely has its faults, but generally, it is fantastic.

Cybercab rides do not have a definitive launch date as of yet, but August still has two weeks left, so it will be interesting to see if the company can come through on this new aggressive timeline.

Continue Reading