Banbury staff at electric vehicle company will be affected by global workforce cuts

The company Arrival, which produces electric vans, has announced that it is cutting approximately 800 jobs in order to focus on the company’s planned US expansion.

The company has moved its direction of focus from the UK to establishing a place in the US market and hopes to take advantage of President Biden’s green energy subsidies.

The US President’s Inflation Reduction Act offers a deal of $369 billion in subsidies and tax credits for companies that invest in electric vehicles and renewable energy if they are manufactured in the USA.

Although Arrival was unable to provide exact figures of where staff would be losing members of their workforce, it has been announced that staff from the Banbury site will be affected.

A spokesperson for the company said: "All Arrival sites globally will be impacted, including Banbury, but we have not issued site-specific numbers."

The company, which was started in London by Russian billionaire Denis Sverdlov in 2014, has seen its value decrease dramatically in the last year, forcing its new chief executive, Igor Torgov to make some tough decisions.

Arrival expanded heavily in Banbury and Bicester in 2020 after securing an £85 million investment from Korean car firms Hyundai and Kia, which enabled them to produce around 10,000 vehicles a year from the Bicester site alone.

Now the global company, which currently produces electric vans, cars, and buses, is looking to cut half of its 1,600-strong workforce, with staff at the Banbury and Bicester sites included in the job cuts.