Greg Layson/Automotive News (via subscription)
Project Arrow, the first all-Canadian, all-electric, connected and autonomous vehicle, must have hit its mark because the Canadian and Ontario governments are giving the ongoing initiative another $11 million (CND) in funding.
The money will be used to help the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association and its members build not just one more crossover, but rather a fleet of them, as many as 12.
For the next phase, dubbed Arrow 2.0, Ontario announced a $4-million contribution in its Fall Economic Statement, released on Oct. 30. The federal government on Nov. 8 said it would kick in $7 million, up from the $5 million it gave to production of the first Arrow.
The original Project Arrow, unveiled in January 2023 after two years of development, was a $20-million venture that saw contributions from the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network, FedDev Ontario, Investissement Quebec and 60 private-sector companies, most of which supply the auto industry.
“We still have to work out the details,” APMA President Flavio Volpe said, “but presumably we’re going to work in the same vein, which is that this is primarily a private-sector driven project, certainly owned by the private sector. Just over 60 per cent of the costs were borne by the suppliers and partners that came on it last time.”
The fleet of vehicles, from the outside, will look like the original Arrow. Money won’t be spent on designing a new body or frame. With the vehicle already designed and prototype built, the next vehicles will focus on improvements such as light-weighting, software and cybersecurity.
Project Arrow like any other vehicle
Volpe likened the latest plan to “any other OEM” that upgrades, updates, refreshes or adds new models to an existing program.
“The silhouette is the same,” Volpe said. “But you’re going to see major technology updates for every new Arrow we build. It is a technology demonstration project, but it will also be used to tell an ecosystem story. So some of our partners will be [EV] charging companies, local distribution companies and they’ll be companies that are in adjacent technologies to the vehicle.
“So, when we get it out there again to CES or in front of OEMs, we won’t waste people’s time.”
As with the original Arrow, the new fleet of vehicles will be assembled at Ontario Tech University, in Oshawa, east of Toronto.
“They were Incredible partners, beyond trustworthy, creative, worked overtime and brought the collective wisdom of that institution into a very, very complex project,” Volpe said of the school.
Ontario has pledged to “establish a special purpose production run facility” for Project Arrow 2.0, which the province says “will also involve demonstration zones in selected municipalities to pilot the vehicles in a real‐world environment.” It did not name those locations in its Fall Economic Statement.
Project Arrow 2.0 prototypes by 2026
Volpe expects the first of the new prototypes to finished in 2026.
“Project Arrow is one of the greatest collaborations in Canadian automotive history, increasing academic institution-led research and supporting talent development and training to demonstrate Canadian automotive ingenuity,” the Government of Canada said in a statement Nov. 8.
Volpe previously said that by the end of 2023, Project Arrow brought $500 million worth of new business to the suppliers involved.
“In the first one, the question was: Can we actually do this? And that’s a fair question,” Volpe said. “Now that we know that we can, and now that we’ve got the basic architecture to build out a bunch more to demonstrate more technologies, the province and the feds are going to get more bang for the buck this time.”