The German car brand Mercedes-Benz is going to build electric vehicles in Europe together with the American car manufacturer Rivian. Both companies are starting a joint venture, they announced on Thursday familiar. Production is planned to start within a few years, at a factory in Eastern or Central Europe. Where exactly, that is not yet known. Both companies hope to save on costs for new production lines through the collaboration.
Mercedes-Benz makes a popular commercial vehicle, the Sprinter. Founded in 2009, Rivian has just started manufacturing vans and large passenger cars in the US. Rivian’s SUVs are also planned to be made in Europe. An intended candidate to produce these cars at VDL NedCar, the car manufacturer in Born in Limburg.
Piece of forest cut down
VDL NedCar sees the deal between Rivian and Mercedes as a positive signal that Rivian is actually expanding in Europe. A spokesperson says NRC know that Mercedes’ announcement does not threaten a possible partnership with Rivian; the VDL NedCar factory is set up to make passenger cars, not to produce delivery vans.
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VDL NedCar (approximately 5,000 employees) is an independent car manufacturer that makes vehicles of all kinds. BMWs are still being made in Born in Limburg, but that contract expires in 2023. BMW has chosen to concentrate production in its own factories and to no longer set up product lines for new models at VDL NedCar. As long as no replacement customer is found, the work in Born will stop in 2023. However, it recently became clear that BMW is extending the contract for another four months. That means that production will not stop in November 2023, but in March 2024.
In Born, we are waiting for a successor to BMW. VDL NedCar wants to be able to expand, in order to possibly serve several car manufacturers at the same time in the future. That is why land around the existing factory was purchased and a piece of forest was cut down. But contracts have not yet been signed.
Rivian is one of the parties with which VDL Nedcar is in talks, but the Americans have not yet made a final choice. Another location Rivian is considering for passenger car production is the UK Somerset. There, the government is prepared to improve the connection to the local motorway, to persuade Rivian to invest more than a billion pounds (1.15 billion euros) in a brand new factory.
The American automaker has two major investors behind it: Amazon and Ford. Earlier this year, those companies wrote billions off because Rivian lost 1.9 billion and 6 percent of its 14,000 employees have to fire.
Ford has already reduced its stake in Rivian somewhat, Amazon is still holding on to its share. The Rivian vans will also be used to expand Amazon’s own delivery fleet – Amazon ordered 100,000 electric vans for its delivery fleet. The first Rivian vans are currently driving orders in American cities.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 10, 2022