About 10 years after the ceremonial opening of the Development and Testing Center (EVZ) in Wörth am Rhein, Germany, Mercedes‑Benz Trucks will invest about another 50 million euros in the center of competence for the development work on commercial vehicles.

An additional office and workshop building, a new building housing test benches, as well as parking for test vehicles will be built on the premises of the development grounds in Wörth by 2020. At present, some 200 employees from vehicle testing and related test units are working in the EVZ. Once the expansion is completed, it is expected that about 350 employees will be working there.

Mercedes-Benz Trucks is developing the Wörth location and will bring new technologies to the location on the Rhine River. By pooling the development activities in Wörth, the largest assembly plant of Mercedes-Benz Trucks further gains in importance in the global production network and offers additional attractive jobs at the location that are secure in the long term.

According to the company, the Development and Testing Center (EVZ) is a center of competence for the development work of Mercedes-Benz Trucks and plays an important role on the road to connected, automated and electric driving. It has numerous rough-road tracks and different roadway profiles that replicate the roads of this world.

The center is able to provide the same conditions for the test vehicles as are found in South America, South Korea, Africa, and Europe, for example. Furthermore, the EVZ comprises the break-in track with inclinations of up to 49%, which can be used for functional testing. 

Several officials and dignitaries attended the start of construction, including Uwe Baake, head of product development Mercedes‑Benz Trucks; Gerald Jank, head of Mercedes-Benz truck operations; Ingo Ettischer, head of Mercedes-Benz Wörth plant; Thomas Zwick, chairman of the Works Council of the Mercedes-Benz Wörth plant; Volker Wissing, minister for economics, transportation, agriculture and viticulture of Rhineland-Palatinate; Fritz Brechtel, district administrator of Germersheim; and Dennis Nitsche, mayor of Wörth.

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