Mercedes to Open Lab in Long Beach

Mercedes-Benz of North America will open a $6-million, 21,000-square-foot emissions testing lab in Long Beach today. Mercedes, which counts California as its largest U.S. market, will use the lab to test pre-production vehicles, run quality-assurance tests on customer-owned cars and sport-utility vehicles and test future fuel-cell- and electric-powered vehicles, spokeswoman Denise Norman said. The lab contains one of the industry’s first four-wheel-drive dynamometers capable of testing the new generation of all-wheel-drive cars as well as four-wheel-drive trucks and SUVs. The new facility replaces an 8,000-square-foot test lab in Carson that the German luxury car maker operated for the last 25 years.