Mercedes-Benz and Rivian mentioned Thursday they’re planning a three way partnership to construct giant, electrical industrial vans for each manufacturers.

The businesses plan to fabricate two completely different EV vans – one for every automaker – on a shared meeting line, they mentioned. The concept is to cut back prices for each firms by sharing investments, know-how and suppliers.

They plan to construct a brand new EV-only manufacturing facility at an current Mercedes-Benz manufacturing unit website in Central or Japanese Europe, with manufacturing beginning in “a couple of years,” the 2 firms mentioned in a press release.

“Mercedes‑Benz Vans has gained broad expertise in producing and launching eVans since 2010. Now we’re accelerating the transformation to a totally electrical product portfolio,” mentioned Mathias Geisen, head of Mercedes’ industrial van unit. “We’re sharing investments and know-how [with Rivian] as a result of we additionally share the identical strategic ambition: accelerating the electrification of the van market with sustainable and superior merchandise for our clients.”

Whereas Mercedes-Benz has been constructing industrial autos for a few years, and electrical vans for greater than a decade, Rivian is a newcomer to the phase. The California-based EV startup started manufacturing EV supply vans for Amazon earlier this 12 months, only a few months after it began manufacturing of its personal upscale electrical pickups and SUVs in its Illinois manufacturing unit.

Though the vans Mercedes and Rivian will finally construct will possible be comparable, they will be completely different designs: Mercedes’ shall be based mostly on its upcoming new EV van structure, set to debut in 2025; Rivian’s on the next-generation model of the sunshine van platform it developed for Amazon.

Correction: This story has been up to date to appropriate that Rivian relies in California.