REE Automotive, the Tel Aviv-headquartered automotive technology company and provider of electric vehicle platforms, has announced it is moving towards commercial production, having proven its robotic assembly capabilities.
REE says it will now implement its cloud-based robotic assembly lines across its network of highly-digitalised global manufacturing plants, starting with its European Integration Centre at Coventry in the UK.
REE’s Coventry Integration Centre will initially focus on the P7 electric platform developed for vans, buses, and recreational vehicles, which features REE’s novel corner technology. This puts critical vehicle components such as steering, braking, suspension, powertrain and control, into a single compact module in the arch of the wheel, creating significantly greater volumetric efficiency than a conventional configuration.
The Coventry site, says REE, will also operate as the blueprint for all future REE Integration Centres, with expected capacity of 10,000 vehicle sets (that is 40,000 REEcorners) this year. The North American Integration Center in Austin, Texas, is expected to double global capacity to 20,000 vehicle sets in 2023 by replicating the manufacturing facilities of its European sibling.
The company is partnering with industry leaders including Rockwell Automation and Expert Technologies for robotics and automated assembly, with the first assembly line expected to become operational in the second half of 2022.
“This is an important milestone on our path to commercial production next year. The automated and connected capabilities at our Coventry site are a great foundation for our global operations, as they will enable us to continuously fine-tune our assembly procedures and rapidly deploy them to other sites,” said Josh Tech, REE’s Chief Operating Officer. “Our cloud-based robotic manufacturing system will be the digital backbone for our assembly lines and give us the local capability to manage our customer-specific manufacturing operations, while also allowing us to quickly share and scale best practices internationally across all plants.”
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