VANCE, Ala. — Mercedes-Benz’s U.S. meeting plant reworked the Deep South’s industrial base when it opened right here 25 years in the past. Now, the 6-million-square-foot manufacturing juggernaut is being reinvented for one more new automotive period.
Mercedes final week set the stage for the U.S. mass manufacturing of luxurious electrical automobiles. The Alabama plant can be key to Mercedes’ intention to take the struggle to EV kingpin Tesla. The German powerhouse plans to plow greater than $46 billion this decade into growing an armada of electrical sedans, crossovers and vans.
Vance, already a worldwide export hub, might pump out greater than 100,000 EVs subsequent 12 months: Manufacturing of the EQS full-size SUV ought to start in June, whereas EQE midsize crossover meeting will begin in October.
Final week, at an occasion attended by Mercedes’ prime brass, the corporate opened its new battery pack plant and stated it’s going to start sourcing battery cells within the U.S. by mid-decade to energy the wave of EVs.
The Japan-headquartered battery provider Envision AESC will construct a U.S. manufacturing unit to provide a brand new technology of battery parts for Mercedes.
“It was our plan all alongside … to have devoted cell manufacturing within the U.S.,” Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Okällenius stated. “AESC was a completely excellent match on the technological facet … [and] their dedication to our model constructing a devoted facility for us.”
Mercedes is taking a practical method to safe battery capability. Somewhat than make investments billions of its personal {dollars} in brick-and-mortar battery manufacturing, the automaker is partnering with suppliers to create a community of eight cell factories globally.
“We don’t have to personal all these industrial belongings,” Mercedes-Benz Chief Expertise Officer Markus Schäfer stated. “We do not have to regulate the manufacturing course of. That does not make a distinction for purchasers.”
Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst at Guidehouse Insights, additionally commented that Mercedes’ anticipated EV volumes possible do not justify a direct fairness funding in cell factories.
“Common Motors, Ford, Stellantis have larger annual manufacturing volumes,” Abuelsamid stated. “They’ve made a strategic choice that they wish to personal a few of that manufacturing capability.”
Batteries are the brand new battleground within the EV age, and automakers are scrambling to commercialize applied sciences that may give them a monetary and efficiency edge.
“We’re absolutely vertically built-in on the R&D facet,” Okällenius stated.
“We wish to have management over the primary applied sciences as a result of a Mercedes is a Mercedes, and it must deserve the star. We expect we all know greatest what the model promise technologically means.”
It is clear why Okällenius is focusing Mercedes’ assets on expertise within the EV period: The CEO stated that the auto business could be “turned on its head” on this decade by electrification and software program.
“In case you have the ambition to be a number one innovation tech firm … it’s important to double down on these two technological areas with out forgetting all the opposite stuff you discovered during the last hundred years,” Okällenius stated.
However Mercedes executives had been tight-lipped on what battery expertise Envision will ship them.
“I am not going to provide the recipe,” Okällenius stated, noting that the Envision-built batteries will energy Mercedes’ next-general EQ fashions,
However Mercedes has been engaged on energy-dense chemistries geared towards long-range fashions. The automaker is also investigating cheaper however much less highly effective lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries for its entry-level fashions.
“There is a renaissance of LFP,” Okällenius stated.
Automakers are taken with LFP as a result of it eliminates nickel and cobalt, Abuelsamid stated. Nickel represents the one most important chunk — about 40 % — of cell value.
The absence of nickel additionally makes LFP cells terribly sturdy and steady. “You possibly can take an iron-phosphate cell and drive a nail via it, and it will not have a thermal runaway,” Abuelsamid stated.
Envision AESC has greater than a decade of expertise constructing battery cells. The corporate began as a three way partnership of Nissan and NEC to supply batteries for the Nissan Leaf, with a full-scale battery cell and battery pack meeting plant in Smyrna, Tenn., 230 miles north of Mercedes’ Alabama operations.
However when anticipated demand for the Leaf didn’t materialize, Nissan purchased out NEC’s stake and later offered a majority stake within the firm to China’s Envision Group.
Envision has cell manufacturing offers with Nissan and Renault in Japan, France and the U.Ok. and goals to have greater than 300 gigawatt-hours of capability by 2030.
Envision has produced “a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of cells,” Schäfer stated. “It is spectacular to see their information about sequence manufacturing, their perspective towards security and high quality.”
Mercedes’ present battery suppliers CATL and Farasis Power don’t have U.S. manufacturing capabilities.
“OEMs are taken with diversifying their provide base, so they are not depending on any single firm or area for geopolitical and logistics causes,” Abuelsamid stated.
Envision might announce the situation of its battery cell manufacturing unit early subsequent month, a spokeswoman with the provider advised Automotive Information. It’ll possible be close to the Vance meeting plant as a result of car batteries are heavy and costly to ship.
“Most automakers are working to ascertain cell provides which are typically inside a number of hours’ driving distances of the car meeting,” Abuelsamid stated.