Production at Mercedes
The manufacturer is preparing its German plants for the production of electric cars.
(Photo: Reuters)
Mercedes-Benz has agreed with employee representatives on a plan to switch to electric cars. As the company announced on Wednesday after weeks of negotiations, the plant in Rastatt, Baden, will remain a competence center for compact vehicles. So far, the A and B classes have been rolling off the assembly line there.
The factories in Rastatt and in Kecskemét, Hungary, will be building models based on a new electric platform from the year after next. For smaller cars, there will only be four instead of seven body variants in the future.
The manufacturer did not explicitly comment on the future of the A and B classes. It is too early to commit to individual models. Speculations about the discontinuation of the A and B class had also triggered fears among employees. Altogether around 323,000 of these models were built last year.
Mercedes now relies primarily on expensive and heavy luxury cars to earn more. With the production order for the coming years, locations will be secured, as Mercedes board member Jörg Burzer said. According to a statement, general works council chief Ergun Lümali spoke of good news, especially for the employees. “With the investments in the new production order, we have achieved that vehicles with the new electric architecture are manufactured at the German locations and thus contribute to capacity utilization,” said Lümali. More than two billion euros will be invested in European factories by 2026.
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There are also agreements for other plants. Sindelfingen near Stuttgart, where the S-Class luxury sedan is built, remains the competence center for top vehicles. In Bremen, where, among other things, the C-Class rolls off the assembly line, there will be a model based on a new platform from the middle of the decade.
More: Mercedes deletes the A-Class – a turning point that triggers criticism