Greenworks Commercial, the leading provider of lithium-ion battery-operated, zero-emission power equipment, expanded its global footprint by opening the doors to its 180,000 sq. ft. Commercial Center of Excellence for Manufacturing and Engineering in Morristown, Tenn., its first in North America.

The facility’s initial $25 million investment will focus on the manufacture of commercial and residential lithium-ion battery ride-on mowers. This initial phase provides an annual production capacity of 30,000 ride-on mowers, gradually increasing to 80,000 by 2025.

The state-of-the-art facility currently houses:

• Two leading-edge automated guided vehicles (AGV) based assembly lines
• A fully robotic vehicle chassis welding center with five fully robotic welding stations
• High-precision tube and sheet metal laser cutting, stamping and CNC tube-bending equipment
• A shot-blasting metal preparation center and powder-coating line
• A state-of-the-art final inspection station including a light tunnel for visual inspection
• An exterior bumper and track test facility

Planned expansions for late 2023 and early 2024, include:

• Installation of an e-coating workshop and an injection molding center
• Automatic assembly lines for large commercial-grade battery modules for ride-on mowers and battery packs for commercial handheld and walk-behind product lines
• Manufacturing of commercial walk-behind mowers
• A parts and service warehouse

The Morristown facility is also home to the North American Center for Advanced Vehicle Engineering within the Greenworks corporate group, with over a dozen mechanical, electrical, and testing engineers calling Morristown home by the end of 2023. The U.S. engineering team collaborates with Greenworks’ main R&D campus in Changzhou, China, and its Autonomous and Robotics R&D Center in Jönköping, Sweden.

By late 2023, Greenworks Commercial is set to begin manufacturing its fully autonomous, self-driving commercial ride-on mower, OptimusAI, in Morristown. This ride-on mower, based on the OptimusZ platform design, features sophisticated GPS-RTK navigation and vision-based live-object avoidance technology, allowing both self-driving and manned-driving modes. In its self-driving mode, the system operates with an accuracy of one inch.

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