One of the most advanced factories in Europe is producing the Ineos Grenadier, which has attracted attention because of its old-school route. We test-drove the car and also visited the factory.
Every three months, Ineos Motor Company destroys two Grenadiers (meaning Grenadiers). Inspectors use the equipment used by the fire brigade to rescue victims trapped in cars with serious accidents, dismantling these large 4WD off-road vehicles with hammers, drills, scissors and crowbars, with the aim of testing the effectiveness of adhesives and welds.
This violence is part of a strict quality control program at the plant that produces Grenadier. The factory is located in Hambach on the French side of the Franco-German border, and production of the Grenadier production version will begin soon, and it is currently estimated that the first customers will get their cars in August.
The story of Grenadier's ideation, upbringing and upcoming birth is interesting and incredible (the short version is: a billionaire who thinks he knows more about defenders than Land Rover, and to make a point, he founded a new car company with employees including auto industry veterans and other industry capables, sticking to a pragmatic trapezoidal chassis, buying petrol and diesel 6-cylinder engines from BMW). The same is true of factory transformation stories.
Before Ineos moved in a year ago, it had been a Mercedes factory since 1997, producing several SUVs and Smarts. Under the agreement with Ineos, part of the factory will continue to produce the Smart until 2024, and part will produce some parts of the Mercedes EQA and EQB fronts until 2027, but the rest have been completely revamped to produce cars that are so different from that electric two-seater car that it can hardly be any bigger: a realistic version of the boxy four-wheel drive car sketched by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of the Ineos Group, sketched on the wine glass mat.
Ineos, English name INEOS, founded in 1998, the main business is petrochemical products, has now grown into a large integrated group, in 2020 to sponsor the Mercedes-AMG F1 team into the field of vision of car fans, but Ineos Motor Company is a complete newcomer in automobile manufacturing. It doesn't think it can go it alone, so it works with a large number of more mature companies: BMW for the engine, ZF for the transmission, Carraro in Italy for the axle... But the most critical partner is Magnus Steyr, which it works with on development. Ineos did not choose to cram the Grenadier into the Steyr branch, which is more experienced in producing 4WD cars (i.e. the Graz plant in Austria, where the G-Class is made for Mercedes), because it needed not only a factory that could produce only one car, but a place that could become the home of the entire car company. Ineos Motor Company has confirmed that the Grenadier family will have several other body forms in addition to the initial release of five-seat passenger cars and two- and five-seater commercial vehicles. The possibility of hydrogen power and battery power systems is also being investigated. Once the contract with Mercedes is closed, Hambach's production capacity will increase significantly – either by exceeding the current target of producing 30,000 Grenadiers per year or by adding different models.
So, in order to produce a brand new model, what should the factory do to prepare? First, choose a location that is almost impossible to better meet your needs: the location is convenient for many suppliers and has reached the very high standards that Mercedes adheres to. Secondly, about 500 million euros will be invested here, most of which will be used to buy robots, which play an important role in assembling and finalizing Grenadier, along with around 1,000 people who work for Ineos in Hambach, who will have completed a cumulative 80,000 hours of training by the start of production – most of whom have accumulated a wealth of experience before that. Their average age is 45 years and their average work experience is 20 years.
No matter how traditional Grenadier's appeal is, its production is very advanced. 250 robots were used in the body shop. Any work involving heavy objects will be done by the robot, for example the door is placed in place by the robot, but then installed by the mechanic with a torque wrench.
Will anyone still use trapezoidal frames in 2022?!
The first of Grenadier's original designs was to be sturdy.
Then there's the spotless painting workshop – Mercedes is upgrading it while inoclus negotiates an agreement with Steyr. Now, when it's finishing its preparations for full-scale production, it's an amazing combination of human and machine, brain power and software. Every process, including corrosion protection, painting, sealing, baking, topping, etc., is manually inspected – the company aims to be flaw-free. Sometimes, when the robot rotates and swings to complete the operation, the movement is very similar to an elegant human dance. At one station, two robots will open the rear door so that a third robot can stick the paint gun into the car.
Some precision inspections are done by machines, such as ultrasonic testing of 4068 steel solder joints and 358 aluminum solder joints. However, the solder joints are also inspected by manual visual inspection and sandpaper is used if necessary.
Also working with the robot are 1,000 trained Homo sapiens
These machines are robbing human jobs!
In fact, this kind of work is really not suitable for people.
In the final assembly area, the body is connected to the chassis and the power system, and only eight bolts are required for this link. This is followed by the installation of the harness and cab. The front and rear windshields are passed by the robot to two assemblers carrying suction cups. This is followed by the installation of the seat and battery.
Then, that is, finally, to the quality inspection area, where the finished car is inspected, focusing on the kind of link that the owner will notice, which the factory calls "flush and clearance". It is also here that a complete set of aluminium components, including the doors, roof and front hatch, is sampled from the production line three times a week. A four-hour laser measurement of the complete body-in-white is also carried out, using a ZEISS EagleEye optical measuring instrument.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a Land Rover production line.
Only here, in the final signing zone, did Grenadier and Smart ForTwo intersect, and then they would be delivered to their respective owners. But as mentioned earlier, some randomly selected unlucky eggs will be destroyed.
Swamp Hell: Test drive Grenadier
If director Christopher Nolan wanted to make a film set in the aftermath of Dunkirk that was set in a particularly tragic phase of World War I, I knew where to shoot it, in an abandoned iron mine in Créhange, Moselle, France, where I had just dug a few trenches where the overcoat-clad, pale-faced actors could have a truly tragic ending.
The pit is now used to train excavator and bulldozer drivers, but today four Ineos Grenadier engineering prototypes are coming with these real steel men. In the automotive world, the Grenadier is neither light nor small, but here it's like a grenadier encountering a cannon.
If all goes well, by this summer, when Grenadier has finalized its tuning and the legal documents required for a brand new model to go on sale, Genadier will be the first of several in The Roles Car Company. The company has confirmed that there will be another pickup truck, and there is a high probability of a seven-seater car. But sir Jim Ratcliffe's new car company is based on a new but memorable car, tasked with filling what the billionaire industrialist believes was left by the delisting of the previous generation of Land Rover Defenders.
Since announcing the launch of Grenadier in 2017, Ineos has been showcasing the results of their work. However, although we have interviewed many of the people involved in creating it, and several editors have already tried out an early version, this is the first time we have actually driven it.
We will go straight to the bottom of the pit. Today's mission is to complete off-road missions that are impossible to complete with ordinary vehicles even when driven by the most experienced off-road vehicle players. It does require an all-wheel drive system, a lot of ground clearance, a lot of gear ratio and a lot of suspension travel.
Point it roughly in the direction you want it to go,
Apply a few degrees of throttle to the 3.0-liter inline 6-cylinder engine,
It starts performing its tasks.
Anyone with enough money can wander around europe's parts suppliers and get a bunch of hardware that looks like the right fit. However, putting these components together in an efficient way is the trickiest problem. After all, even without the Defender, there are many models to choose from, from the Jeep Wrangler, mercedes-Benz G-Class, Toyota Land Cruiser to Ford Ranger – their target customers are all the consumer groups that Ineos targets, including farmers, rescue agencies, adventurers and "super moms" who pick up and drop off children.
Not to mention that the new Guardians are also coming. It's hard to be the cowboy on the Rhine that Ratcliffe must have imagined – the New Defender is still a super-powerful off-road vehicle, reinforcing road performance and being a bit environmentally conscious.
Therefore, Grenadier had better achieve Ratcliffe's wishes, otherwise it would be like a face project. Happily, in the first few minutes of our total half-hour test drive, it became apparent that the engineers at Ineos Motor Company had done an excellent job of carrying out the boss's instructions, at least in dealing with muddy slopes. Point it roughly in the direction you want it to go, apply a few degrees of throttle to the 3.0-liter inline 6-cylinder BMW gasoline engine — or optionally the 3.0-liter 6-cylinder diesel — and it's on its job.
Photographing it alive is the perfect advertisement for the advantages of trapezoidal frame chassis, girder axles, conventional suspension and full-time four-wheel drive systems, of course, using low-speed gears and enabling a central differential lock in this environment.
This design prevents active children from inadvertently opening the differential lock.
It's a pretty charming car with just the right size and damping of the controls, and an excellent Recklaware seat – no thick padding, but in a very good shape, a perfect blend of comfort and support. And, of course, all those cute switches and buttons: the most important features are in the front of the driver's seat, under the small central screen, and in the aircraft-like control area above your head.
Details about the specifications and options will be released in the spring, but today we've seen it excel in terms of practicality: because of the flat and easy-to-scrub body, the door handles are extremely thick, and all kinds of flashy things are missing.
As with other excellent 4XD buggies, the driver's task here is mainly to keep the car working. But it won't do anything for you, and it will reward those who are fully committed. If you're not afraid to go to the trouble of planning a route up and downhill for yourself repeatedly, and then carefully execute the plan, you'll go very smoothly, even if there are horrible ruts under the car.
Nissan Qashqai will surely panic when they arrive here,
Then stop moving.
I've found more than once that it can save you from the dangers of your own operational errors. I took the wrong route at the wrong speed, and on the way uphill I tried to increase the throttle but found that it was too late, and there was nowhere to go except to reverse downhill. The wheels stubbornly tried to find some grip under the soft mud, digging around and finding only more soft mud. Eventually, I followed the instructions, reversed downhill, and tried again on a slightly more muddy line. And then...... It worked! Grenadier found what it needed and took me up the slope to the top. The climb is done at the speed of walking, but if you really want to climb on foot, I'm afraid you'll get stuck in the swampy mud and say goodbye to the world.
If future finished cars can perform half as well on the road as today's engineering models in the gray hell, then this most unpretentious outlier among all new models is an awesome feat.
Timeline
Beer, England, all over the world
1 Grenadier Bar
In 2016, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and a few friends lamented the departure of the veteran Land Rover Defender at Grenadier Pub in Belgravia, a fashion district in London. They had the idea of doing something and demonstrated their entrepreneurial passion for becoming a world-class billionaire – Ratcliffe launched what would become the Ineos Motor Company, giving the Ineos empire a whole new membership.
2 Signed with BMW
Partners matter. Steyr is responsible for vehicle development; BMW will not only supply gasoline and diesel engines in the early stages, but will also provide hybrid systems to replace them in the future.
The original plan was to build a new plant (and hire former Ford employees) next to a factory building in Brigent, Wales, which is about to close, but then the opportunity to buy the Hambach plant from Mercedes has emerged. Ineos relies on the mind, not the blood.
3 Engineering prototypes touring exhibition
The entire development and release process is exceptionally transparent. And it's not just the media that attends events and test rides. Throughout 2021, potential buyers were invited to the Grenadier roadshow, with prototype cars visiting different locations where invitees could take a test ride. The car has also appeared at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and other events.
4Receptments
Although there are also engineering prototypes tested for tens of thousands of kilometers in extreme environments around the world, Ineos began accepting bookings in the fall of 2021 and providing a basic online configurator. Interest was strong, and orders soon reached 15,000 units, not only from the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, but also from Australia. The product planning department has brought the pickup version to market earlier.
5 Delivery of the first cars
The timeline has changed, but the current plan is for production models to start pulling out of the Hambach plant this summer. At that time, a network of more than 100 distribution and repair partners around the world will be completed. Details are yet to be determined, but will certainly include established dealer groups and specialist agricultural companies.
6 Hydrogen Energy and the Future
Parent company Ineos Group has achieved outstanding results in hydrogen energy, so it is a reasonable choice for Ineos Motor Company to cooperate with Hyundai to explore the feasibility of hydrogen fuel cells in cars including Grenadier. What is slightly incomprehensible is that Ineos is no longer as determined as before to resist battery power as a possible source of power for Grenadier, but will study it in depth.
Ineos Grenadier
Price: from £48,000 (estimated)
Powertrain: 2998mL 24 valves
Turbocharged in-line 6-cylinder, 8-speed automatic, front-mounted full drive
Performance: 285ps @ 5000rpm,
450Nm @ 1600rpm，
0~100km/h 10.0s,
Extreme speed 160 km/h (all estimates)
Kerb Weight: 2650kg (Estimated)
Economy: 11.3L fuel consumption per 100 km, CO2 230g/km (all estimates)
Time to market: Deliveries will begin in the summer of 2022
Text/Colin Overland Translation/Shang Hongxin