Mercedes’ new battery plant will support the company’s all-electric ‘EQ’ vehicle production.
Back in 1997, Mercedes-Benz opened its SUV plant in Alabama. Now, as it aims to gear up production for the EQS and EQE SUVs, the automaker announced the opening of a new factory in Bibb County, neighboring its existing facility. This American leg of Mercedes’ EV manufacturing is just part of a global push to build electric models at seven different locations spanning three continents.
“The opening of our new battery plant in Alabama is a major milestone on our way to going all-electric,” said Mercedes-Benz Group AG chairman Ola Källenius. “We’re proud to create new, future-proof jobs to build all-electric SUVs ‘Made in the USA’ at a plant that is such an established part of our production family since 25 years.”
In providing battery packs for the EQS SUV and EQE SUV, Mercedes expects to create 600 jobs at the facility, while the company says it also manages carbon-neutral production when it comes to actually manufacturing the packs.
Over the past two-plus decades, Mercedes has invested $7 billion into its Alabama manufacturing footprint, with $1 billion of that going into the Bibb County battery plant. In addition to powering the facility entirely by renewable energy by 2024, the automaker aims to take Tuscaloosa production fully electric by the end of the decade. To reach that goal, the company plans to leverage partnerships — it’s partnering with Envision AESC to supply high-performance battery modules for Alabama-built vehicles — to build eight cell factories. In total, Mercedes says its production capacity will eventually total 200 Gigawatt-hours by 2030.
While we’re still waiting for the all-electric SUVs, check out the EQS sedan below:
