Greenworks Commercial, a provider of lithium-ion battery-operated, zero-emission outdoor power equipment, expanded its global footprint by opening the doors to its 180,000-square-foot 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 facility currently houses:
- Two 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 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 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.
