Arrival may have something in common with Nucor steel and its mini mills.
Legacy steel mills created steel by melting iron. This required a big, expensive blast furnace that was hard to start and stop.
Nucor recognized that it could use a smaller more nimble electric arc furnace to melt scrap steel. The timeline we're discussing was '68 so think Space Race Era. The concept proved successful.
Since then, Nucor has remained successful with its mini mill concept while other steel companies have faced myriad ups and downs. The technical limitations of the mini mill have gradually gotten better as well expanding Nucor's market. [0,1]
Arrival is claiming that:
1) Its "vehicles won’t require things like metal stamping facilities (the vehicles are made of composites) or paint shops"
2) So that it can create microfactories situated closer to its customers
Regarding Arrival's strategy, I see a similarity to Nucor. Arrival recognizes a new reality for how it will build EVs that it thinks will allow it to manufacture differently just as Nucor did with scrap metal and arc furnaces enabling mini mills.
Is this a viable strategy? I don't know. To decide that I'd need to weigh critiques from people with industry knowledge.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucor#History
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/23/business/the-rise-of-mini...