I have enjoyed your series and love the exterior look of the vans. To my mind Arrival fell into the engineering trap of making things just as complicated as possible and then resolving problems by adding on even more complicated engineering solutions and finally by putting things in inaccessible senseless locations ultimately making a system that was cumbersome and just impractable to manufacture. This is typical of remarkably brilliant people who can't see the bigger picture and simplify, simplify simply. When management is one of these brilliant people you get an overly complicated system that only works "on the bench" under controlled situations and never really works in real life. It reminds me of NASA's Fischer Space pen that writes in space and upside down and NASA spent (in 2025 dollars) hundreds of millions of dollars in developing and when they explained this engineering feat to the Russian space people the Russians said "Well you could have saved all that fancy engineering and all the money by using a pencil!" Sad... keep up the neat series...
Correction. The Tesla Octovalve was introduced in the Model Y which *commenced production* in Fremont, January 2020. Sales began in April and the first details of the system were released by Munro Associates in May 2020. It was so innovative they had to scan the unit to understand the flow patterns.
Recycling heat/cold makes so much sense, so example there are so many pools that have a gym dumping heat to the outside air despite the pools need for heat!
I might be nitpicking, but you're mistaken about PTC heaters. They are 100% efficient, so saying they aren't very efficient is incorrect. I think you mean that they are not the most effective use of energy for producing heat, as a heat pump can move more heat than can be created with the same amount of energy.
Very true, they are efficient but not the best for efficiency compared to a heat pump or direct heat to a person like heater seats which are also a ptc 😂
@@ArryBradbury I think the popularity of the "skateboard" design (across many manufacturers) is to give "coachbuilders" the most flexibility, but your right, thinking about ease of maintenance and repairability should be constantly in the minds of product designers and something the "right to repair" movement have been championing
The AC unit looks like its designed to be easily removed so that if it fails, it can be replaced by a new unit quickly while the malfunctioned one can be easily taken apart and repaired, which would be great for fleet operators of hundreds or thousands of vans. I wonder if they used this unit in their one-off Arrival bus. Do you know who ended up purchasing the Bus that they built, and had registered as a road-legal PSV compliant vehicle? The interior of that bus looked pretty cool, imo. According to Wikipedia, Wrightbus, which is owned by Jo Bamford (JCB), they purchased one of the Arrival sites in Bicster, OXF, so they probably purchased the bus as a development testing vehicle, or just so that no one else can 'steal' their technology.
I am not sure. I do know someone must of brought there testing site as there was a massive amount of infrastructure installed. For things like emc and motor testing.
The key to understanding what is going on with all the EV HVAC stuff is to understand that unlike their fossil fuelled cousins, EVs need to often move heat the "wrong way" across a thermal graident, ie from cold to hot, whereas naturally speaking, heat of course wants to flow from Hot to Cold. With a conventional car, for the most part, it's systems operate well above any practicable ambien temp, for example engine coolant at between 90 and 110degC, or engine / trans lubricants at say 120degC, all well above even the hottest ambeint temp experienced (say 55degC). With an EV, we require parts to operate below ambient temp, for example we need the battery to be kept say at 25degC, which is less than say 35degC a fairly normal ambient temperature. So to reject heat from the battery, we have to move heat against the thermal gradient, and this requires a Heat Pump, ie a device that uses the latent heat of evapouration of a working fluid to push heat the "wrong way" across that thermal graident ie to cool the battery down to 25degC, despite it being 35degC around the vehicle. So once you have a heat pump and can move heat the "wrong" way, then you unlock a series of optimisations that are all of benefit to lowering overal energy consumption which is clearly a major benefit, particularly in something like an urban delivery van where the actual road load is pretty small (because it's average speed is very low). Here, you can now consider HEAT FLUX entirely seperately from Temperature. So you could say, hey, it's cold outside, i want to warm the cabin, and i want to take some heat being generated by the traction inverter and pump that into the cabin. Or for example, you could use the large thermal mass of the traction battery to temporarily store some cabin heat from a cabin that has sat soaking in stong sun. The problem is that when you sit down to work out all the possible vectors that are possible, the matrix of conditions and situations is of some magnitude, so as a result a practical hydraulic circuit layout to achieve all these possible heat fluxes is really complex, which is why the HVAC unit of an EV can look incredibly complex, include very many valves, pumps and pipes etc. One of the main reasons that Tesla was able to come-up with there "octo-valve" later heat pump systems is simply because by this point in time they actually had enough real logged customer data to be able to accurately model and specify the heating modes and conditions that really matter, ie the ones that effect the vehicles regular, real world energy consumption. That is something that Arrival simply didn't have, so no doubt their systems is very complex and tries to do everything rather than be optimised towards reality!
Having had the chance to look around an arrival site before they shut down, I find your videos really interesting. Did you ever get the chance to look at one of their buses?
Detail is good. Treat us like reasonably intelligent 8 year olds. Looking forward to build / rebuild. What do you call an EV conversion when it started as an EV already?! EV Transversion - there you go, just invented a word for you. And that’ll up the clicks if you call it a trans van!
The pronunciation of Bergstrom 😂 great to see that prototype unit thermal unit again. It was hard pulling all the together in the middle of the global shutdown. I wonder if Arrival made full use of it ?
What does the blower assembly look like for driver comfort? If the evaporator transfers into coolant immediately in that assembly and only coolant is plumbed to the driver comfort area, how does the blower assembly/Driver AC remove humidity the way a normal AC setup would?
@Hazell_Nutz They offer a 154Ah 54kWh upgrade battery for the BMW I3 but I can't find much info on the company based in China. Maybe proppa dodgy then. Watched your Mini ev conversation vids, bloody brilliant, my first car was pea green Mini Clubman traveler, wish I'd have kept hold of it, brilliant little car for a small family
If you are keen on that upgrade the cost of a return flight to China might be worth it to check they are real. If not there are a lot of companies in China that work as middle men and can look into things on your behalf. Thanks for watching my first car was a Mini flame red edition
I think you’re wrong about the Tesla hvac. It was 2020. And I’d wager the super bottle from the 2017 1st gen model 3 was more advanced than whatever you’re showing right now. For Tesla, super bottle probably developed 2014-2015 perhaps..? Old tech, but seems like everyone else having a hard time catching up ten years later.
Your right in the US was 2020 but in the UK seem to see them from 21/22 onward maybe just because of sales stock/ when they were road registered. I really like the super bottle design.
Great to see Arrival were getting some things right, although they still had a bit to go on serviceability, especially on vehicles that were going to be racking up very high milage. Really interesting stuff. It's one area that has developed quickly in recent years, thanks to BEV engineers searching for every little bit of extra efficiency. Less components, less weight and a more compact system are also big wins. I'd love to fit the latest Tesla system to my 'classic' Model S.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I have enjoyed your series and love the exterior look of the vans. To my mind Arrival fell into the engineering trap of making things just as complicated as possible and then resolving problems by adding on even more complicated engineering solutions and finally by putting things in inaccessible senseless locations ultimately making a system that was cumbersome and just impractable to manufacture. This is typical of remarkably brilliant people who can't see the bigger picture and simplify, simplify simply. When management is one of these brilliant people you get an overly complicated system that only works "on the bench" under controlled situations and never really works in real life. It reminds me of NASA's Fischer Space pen that writes in space and upside down and NASA spent (in 2025 dollars) hundreds of millions of dollars in developing and when they explained this engineering feat to the Russian space people the Russians said "Well you could have saved all that fancy engineering and all the money by using a pencil!" Sad... keep up the neat series...
Correction.
The Tesla Octovalve was introduced in the Model Y which *commenced production* in Fremont, January 2020. Sales began in April and the first details of the system were released by Munro Associates in May 2020.
It was so innovative they had to scan the unit to understand the flow patterns.
I remember watching it now, is a crazy device. In the UK seems to be on cars from 21/22
Thanx, I'm learning & enjoying this. Your enthusiasm makes it fun.
Recycling heat/cold makes so much sense, so example there are so many pools that have a gym dumping heat to the outside air despite the pools need for heat!
So true
@@Hazell_Nutz Never understood why they don't put ice rinks and pools together....
I might be nitpicking, but you're mistaken about PTC heaters. They are 100% efficient, so saying they aren't very efficient is incorrect. I think you mean that they are not the most effective use of energy for producing heat, as a heat pump can move more heat than can be created with the same amount of energy.
Very true, they are efficient but not the best for efficiency compared to a heat pump or direct heat to a person like heater seats which are also a ptc 😂
Now that’s a funky set up!
Isn’t it just?
Those hidden and inaccessible 12 V lead acid batteries feel really out of place on such an overengineered EV with modular components.
It's not like space was a premium, it's a van!!
😂
I know there was so much space available ether side of the rad packs as well
@@Hazell_Nutz They look too well integrated to be a bodge.
@@ArryBradbury I think the popularity of the "skateboard" design (across many manufacturers) is to give "coachbuilders" the most flexibility, but your right, thinking about ease of maintenance and repairability should be constantly in the minds of product designers and something the "right to repair" movement have been championing
Very interesting they has some sort of an Octovalve set up in the works.
Brilliant series 👏 👌
I liked when you said "like in the past" referring to the whiteboard. You aren't hard on them, it's relatively still a newish arena. 👍💪✌
That’s true but to me it’s been 7 years 😂
Please do a teardown on a battery module! I'd love to see the construction beyond the PCB and intercell busbars as you have previously shown.
I did this on a previous episode down to cell level. We do also have a load of modules for sale on eBay.
The AC unit looks like its designed to be easily removed so that if it fails, it can be replaced by a new unit quickly while the malfunctioned one can be easily taken apart and repaired, which would be great for fleet operators of hundreds or thousands of vans. I wonder if they used this unit in their one-off Arrival bus.
Do you know who ended up purchasing the Bus that they built, and had registered as a road-legal PSV compliant vehicle? The interior of that bus looked pretty cool, imo.
According to Wikipedia, Wrightbus, which is owned by Jo Bamford (JCB), they purchased one of the Arrival sites in Bicster, OXF, so they probably purchased the bus as a development testing vehicle, or just so that no one else can 'steal' their technology.
I am not sure. I do know someone must of brought there testing site as there was a massive amount of infrastructure installed. For things like emc and motor testing.
The key to understanding what is going on with all the EV HVAC stuff is to understand that unlike their fossil fuelled cousins, EVs need to often move heat the "wrong way" across a thermal graident, ie from cold to hot, whereas naturally speaking, heat of course wants to flow from Hot to Cold.
With a conventional car, for the most part, it's systems operate well above any practicable ambien temp, for example engine coolant at between 90 and 110degC, or engine / trans lubricants at say 120degC, all well above even the hottest ambeint temp experienced (say 55degC). With an EV, we require parts to operate below ambient temp, for example we need the battery to be kept say at 25degC, which is less than say 35degC a fairly normal ambient temperature. So to reject heat from the battery, we have to move heat against the thermal gradient, and this requires a Heat Pump, ie a device that uses the latent heat of evapouration of a working fluid to push heat the "wrong way" across that thermal graident ie to cool the battery down to 25degC, despite it being 35degC around the vehicle.
So once you have a heat pump and can move heat the "wrong" way, then you unlock a series of optimisations that are all of benefit to lowering overal energy consumption which is clearly a major benefit, particularly in something like an urban delivery van where the actual road load is pretty small (because it's average speed is very low). Here, you can now consider HEAT FLUX entirely seperately from Temperature. So you could say, hey, it's cold outside, i want to warm the cabin, and i want to take some heat being generated by the traction inverter and pump that into the cabin. Or for example, you could use the large thermal mass of the traction battery to temporarily store some cabin heat from a cabin that has sat soaking in stong sun.
The problem is that when you sit down to work out all the possible vectors that are possible, the matrix of conditions and situations is of some magnitude, so as a result a practical hydraulic circuit layout to achieve all these possible heat fluxes is really complex, which is why the HVAC unit of an EV can look incredibly complex, include very many valves, pumps and pipes etc.
One of the main reasons that Tesla was able to come-up with there "octo-valve" later heat pump systems is simply because by this point in time they actually had enough real logged customer data to be able to accurately model and specify the heating modes and conditions that really matter, ie the ones that effect the vehicles regular, real world energy consumption. That is something that Arrival simply didn't have, so no doubt their systems is very complex and tries to do everything rather than be optimised towards reality!
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience and knowledge is much appreciated. Thank you for watching
Thanks for the video. Love the more technical details.
Thank you. I think we are going to push towards more technical stuff from now on. Next episode I introduce a new build that’s going to be great.
Great Vid, very informative
Really good video you have posted. gave me some knowledge on learning new things.😊
Thank you, I think doing more technical videos is the way forward.
Having had the chance to look around an arrival site before they shut down, I find your videos really interesting. Did you ever get the chance to look at one of their buses?
I've had a look around the Arrival bus and as with the van it had some great ideas as well as bad ones.
Nicely done.
Thanks!
Detail is good. Treat us like reasonably intelligent 8 year olds.
Looking forward to build / rebuild.
What do you call an EV conversion when it started as an EV already?!
EV Transversion - there you go, just invented a word for you. And that’ll up the clicks if you call it a trans van!
😂
this was very fun
Thank you
The pronunciation of Bergstrom 😂 great to see that prototype unit thermal unit again. It was hard pulling all the together in the middle of the global shutdown. I wonder if Arrival made full use of it ?
Thank you 😂
Loving this but can we get 20 min vids????
They are coming with our new build that will go into a lot more detail
What does the blower assembly look like for driver comfort? If the evaporator transfers into coolant immediately in that assembly and only coolant is plumbed to the driver comfort area, how does the blower assembly/Driver AC remove humidity the way a normal AC setup would?
I will have to take the assembly apart and see
Great content.
Have you heard of a company called MTG Martigi by any chance?
I have not
@Hazell_Nutz They offer a 154Ah 54kWh upgrade battery for the BMW I3 but I can't find much info on the company based in China. Maybe proppa dodgy then. Watched your Mini ev conversation vids, bloody brilliant, my first car was pea green Mini Clubman traveler, wish I'd have kept hold of it, brilliant little car for a small family
If you are keen on that upgrade the cost of a return flight to China might be worth it to check they are real. If not there are a lot of companies in China that work as middle men and can look into things on your behalf. Thanks for watching my first car was a Mini flame red edition
@Hazell_Nutz Thanks for the suggestions and keep the vids coming, there's sod all on the telly worth the license fee.
brill
It was really good, but it was also subcontracted lmao.
👍
I think you’re wrong about the Tesla hvac. It was 2020. And I’d wager the super bottle from the 2017 1st gen model 3 was more advanced than whatever you’re showing right now. For Tesla, super bottle probably developed 2014-2015 perhaps..? Old tech, but seems like everyone else having a hard time catching up ten years later.
Your right in the US was 2020 but in the UK seem to see them from 21/22 onward maybe just because of sales stock/ when they were road registered. I really like the super bottle design.
So they actually did some engineering 😅😅😅
Sort of 😂 it’s an off the shelf unit
Great to see Arrival were getting some things right, although they still had a bit to go on serviceability, especially on vehicles that were going to be racking up very high milage.
Really interesting stuff. It's one area that has developed quickly in recent years, thanks to BEV engineers searching for every little bit of extra efficiency. Less components, less weight and a more compact system are also big wins.
I'd love to fit the latest Tesla system to my 'classic' Model S.