BIBB COUNTY, AL – Mercedes-Benz opens a battery-pack plant here today, near its longtime U.S. production base of Tuscaloosa, AL.
The facility, which along with logistics centers is expected to create up to 600 jobs, will assemble battery packs for the EQ SUV models Mercedes plans to build at its nearby vehicle-assembly plant.
The pack-assembly plant will use “high-performance” modules with lithium-ion cells from China’s Envision AESC as well as other suppliers. Mercedes says the supplier by mid-decade will be providing modules to the pack plant here from a new facility in the U.S.
Mercedes says this plant, on which it broke ground in fall 2018, helps advance its plans to have nine battery-electric vehicles on offer this year and even more in the future.
“Establishing a strong battery-cell partner network in accordance with our global production strategy is a very important milestone on our way to CO2 neutrality,” Markus Schaefer, chief technology officer for Mercedes-Benz, says in a statement released to media ahead of today’s opening ceremonies.
Schaefer says Mercedes and Envision AESC have a years-long contract for future generations of Mercedes EQ BEVs to be assembled in the U.S. This appears to be a new relationship for Mercedes up to now it has had widely reported sourcing pacts for cells with CATL and LG, and it would make sense for them to be among other suppliers providing cells to the plant here, though Mercedes doesn’t confirm that.
Like the CATL cells already in use in the EQS sedan, Mercedes says the cells in the SUVs will have nickel, manganese and cobalt content in a ratio of 8:1:1. The cobalt content of about 10% represents a reduction from prior-generation NMC chemistry.
The cells made by Envision AESC will go into a modular design already in use in the EQS. That sedan’s largest pack, a 108-kWh unit, consists of 12, 9-kWh modules.
Mercedes already operates pack-assembly plants in Beijing; Bangkok; Kamenz and Stuttgart, Germany; and Jawlor, Poland.
Mercedes Chairman Ola Källenius contends the battery plant, and the move to build electric SUVs on the same line in Tuscaloosa as conventional internal-combustion-engine models, will create “new, future-proof jobs.” Mercedes says it has invested $1 billion in the battery plant, nearby logistics centers and upgrading the Tuscaloosa vehicle assembly line for the production of BEVs.
Production of the EQ SUVs in Tuscaloosa will begin in a few months, with some destined for export. The plant assembled about 260,000 GLE, GLE Coupe, GLS and Mercedes-Maybach GLS SUVs in 2021, with two-thirds of the output sent overseas.
In keeping with a Mercedes directive to expand renewable energy production at its plants, the pack-assembly building will use electricity from entirely renewable energy sources starting from 2024 onwards, so long as approval is granted to planned solar-energy projects onsite.
In a related move, the automaker will be expanding its global battery-recycling strategy by selecting “high-tech partners” for battery recycling in the U.S. and China. Mercedes already is building a German battery-recycling plant, which will employ hydrometallurgical technology.
Mercedes also uses this event to stage a sneak peek at the new EQS SUV debuting next month and to be built here in Alabama.
Like its sedan brother, the SUV has several showstopping elements in its interior, including the same 56-in. (142-cm) curved MBUX Hyperscreen across the width of the instrument panel.
