Saar: The Germans will invest around 500 million euros to expand and ready its manufacturing facility in Hambach, France.

Mercedes-Benz has announced that it will make an investment of around 500 million euros (over Rs 4,000 crore at current exchange rates) in expanding its manufacturing operations in Hambach, France. This expansion will be done to produce the first-ever Mercedes-Benz product in the facility. Confused? Don’t be. The Hambach plant, which has been in business for over 20 years, has only ever produced products for Mercedes-Benz’s smart brand.

Which product will Mercedes produce in Hambach? It will be a compact vehicle, belonging to its own EQ brand. Why did the company choose this particular facility? Well, the plant is well versed in producing electric cars. It has been doing so for the smart brand since 2007. Even today, the Hambach facility is producing two electric vehicles – smart EQ fortwo coupe and the smart EQ fortwo cabrio.

Mercedes-Benz EQ Concept

Mercedes-Benz hasn’t revealed any other information about the compact EQ it will build in France. But it did mention about launching over ten electric cars by 2022. The Stuttgart-based company feels that by 2025, the chunk of electric vehicle sales will form between 15 to 25 per cent of its total sales. Apart from Mercedes’ own EQ branded products, its smart brand will play a vital role in achieving the desired sales numbers from electric vehicles. That’s because, from 2020, smart will become the first brand in the world which will have transformed completely from making products with internal combustion engines to pure electric ones.

With the said investment, Mercedes-Benz will develop a new body shop and surface treatment unit will be built. The Hambach plant will also be expanded for additional assembly facilities, while the site’s infrastructure will also be redone.

For electric car production plans on a global level, Markus Schäfer, member of the divisional board of management of Mercedes-Benz Cars, production and supply chain, said:

“With the production of a compact electric car in Hambach, we are adding further capacities for our electric initiative at six locations on three continents. The smart plant in Hambach will become a part of our global compact car production network with the lead plant Rastatt, Germany.”

The production network of the electric compact cars includes the plant in Kecskemét, Hungary, the BBAC production site in Beijing, the COMPAS plant in Aguascalientes (Mexico) and the Finnish manufacturing service provider Valmet Automotive.