Building a vehicle in 2024 is hard. Building a company in 2024 is even harder. Building the two, one of which had an asking price of $128,000, is a recipe for some serious headaches unless your pockets are bottomless.
That wasn't the case with Arc Vehicle, the manufacturer of the fully electric hub-steered Vector motorcycle.
According to MCN and Visor Down, Arc Vehicle has gone into liquidation, with the latter quoting the UK's Company House stating that Arc V LTD had filed an "extraordinary resolution to wind up" and appoint "a voluntary liquidator." Reports say that just 11 motorcycles were delivered to clients at the time of bankruptcy filing, including one to noted celebrity motorcyclist Ryan Reynolds.
But 11 bikes is most definitely not enough to keep a startup afloat, yet represents more than others in the industry have produced, cough, cough Damon Motorcycles.
MCN spoke with Arc Vehicle's Founder and CEO Mark Truman, who said, “Ultimately when you sell high-cost low-volume bespoke products it doesn’t take many people letting you down to put you in a difficult position," adding, "Things had been going very well, but distribution issues in the US really hurt our revenue which forced us to seek investment. I’m currently working with partners and am determined to try and bring Arc out of administration. I will also do everything I can to support client motorcycles in market going forward.”
And to that end, Truman stated that he had reached out to those 11 clients and explained the situation. "The first thing that we did when we realized that this was going to happen was reach out to all of the customers,” he said.
Arc's been here before, though, as the company began life in 2017 and went into administration in 2019. Truman bought the company and revived it in 2020, and was in talks to receive further funding with the UK's Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy and Office for Low Emission Vehicles. That, obviously, didn't happen or didn't happen quick enough. Could Arc pull another rabbit out of its hat, though?
As Truman stated earlier, he's working to resolve the matter, and based on the bike's design, maybe he can do it again. Time will tell if this very expensive bike will see the light of day again.
