Mercedes, a German luxury vehicle company, will spend billions of dollars to upgrade its plants in China, Germany, and Hungary in the coming years as the automobile company prepares to shift to electric vehicles and cut back on emissions, according to a report by Automobilwoche, a Germany-based Automotive magazine.
The European Union has decided to take measures to reduce CO2 emissions per passenger car in their life span within this decade as compared to 2020 and is considering 2035 as a deadline to terminate the selling of fossil fuel cars.
The carmaker company has said it is set to switch to electric cars by the end of this decade when the market condition supports the shift.
“We are investing a three-digit million amount per plant for the run-up”, production manager Joerg Burzer was quoted as saying by the magazine. He also clarified that the company’s investments are meant for the plants in Beijing, Rastatt in Germany and Kecskemet in Hungary.
The vehicle company will begin its work starting from the Rastatt plant, where work will start in the next few months as well as manufacturing the first model of the compact vehicle platform MMA in 2024. The model manufactured there will be reduced to four from seven, Burzer added.
Additionally, Mercedes will devote a low-single-digit billion-dollar amount to redesigning the painting system at its plants in Sindelfingen, Breman as well as the Rastatt plant in Germany.
The modernization of these plants is an effort aiming to reduce the consumption of energy and water, and the dependence of the painting system on gas, which is opposite to carbon-free energy, the report said.
Automobilwoche said Mercedes is also planning to extend its US plant in Tuscaloosa, where government subsidies are available according to 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Mercedes is capable of facing any further changes in the administrative framework. Burzer said, “the framework conditions worldwide change again and again, we may have to react to that.”
