Eisenach (dpa/th) – Opel has expanded its production program from Eisenach with a sports variant. The Grandland GSe is a plug-in hybrid with all-wheel drive, an Opel spokesman announced on Thursday on request. The sporty SUV recently rolled off the assembly line at the Thuringian plant as the 75 millionth vehicle in Opel’s history. Eisenach’s Mayor Katja Wolf (left) sees the automotive location Eisenach strengthened by the Opel decision.
A total of 12,000 jobs in the supply industry in western Thuringia depended on automobile construction, explained Wolf. According to a study by the Automotive Thuringia industry network, that is almost 30 percent of all employees in this industry, which is important for Thuringia. Opel reaffirms its goal of completely switching to electric cars in Europe by 2028.
Opel CEO Florian Huettl reported well-filled order books at the 30th anniversary of the Eisenach car factory in September. At the moment, around 1,300 employees work in two shifts in Eisenach, exclusively producing the SUV Grandland as a plug-in hybrid and with classic combustion engines.