Creation of electrical Amazon delivery vans on April 11, 2022 at Rivian’s plant in Normal, Unwell.
Michael Wayland / CNBC
Mercedes-Benz and Rivian mentioned Thursday they are setting up a joint venture to build big, electric commercial vans for equally makes.
The organizations approach to manufacture two various EV vans – a person for just about every automaker – on a shared assembly line, they mentioned. The concept is to lessen fees for both equally corporations by sharing investments, technology and suppliers.
They prepare to construct a new EV-only generation facility at an current Mercedes-Benz manufacturing facility internet site in Central or Jap Europe, with generation setting up in “a handful of years,” the two providers reported in a statement.
“Mercedes‑Benz Vans has acquired broad knowledge in producing and launching eVans since 2010. Now we are accelerating the transformation to a fully electric merchandise portfolio,” explained Mathias Geisen, head of Mercedes’ business van unit. “We are sharing investments and engineering [with Rivian] mainly because we also share the same strategic ambition: accelerating the electrification of the van market with sustainable and excellent products and solutions for our buyers.”
While Mercedes-Benz has been making commercial vehicles for numerous yrs, and electric powered vans for much more than a ten years, Rivian is a newcomer to the section. The Michigan-primarily based EV startup started producing EV shipping vans for Amazon before this year, just a number of months after it started off output of its individual upscale electric powered pickups and SUVs in its Illinois factory.
Although the vans Mercedes and Rivian will ultimately build will probable be similar, they are going to be various layouts: Mercedes’ will be based on its approaching new EV van architecture, established to debut in 2025 Rivian’s on the up coming-era model of the light-weight van system it made for Amazon.