ABB to supply over 1,300 robots to Volvo Cars

ABB says it has strengthened its long-standing partnership with Volvo Cars to supply more than 1,300 robots and functional packages to build the next generation of electric vehicles. This will support the Swedish car manufacturer to achieve its ambitious sustainability targets.

Marc Segura, ABB Robotics president, says: “The automotive industry’s historic transformation, driven by increasing consumer demand for electric vehicles and a desire to operate more sustainably, is creating new opportunities as well as challenges for global manufacturers.

“This latest commitment from our partner Volvo Cars demonstrates our shared focus of delivering more sustainable manufacturing. Through our new, energy efficient large robot family and OmniCoreTM controllers we will help to deliver energy savings of up to 20 percent at sites around the world.”

This agreement includes functional packages covering various production tasks, from spot-welding, riveting, and dispensing to flow drilling and ultrasonic weld inspection.

Each package is a ready-to-use, customer-proven combination of hardware, software and services and will be implemented at Volvo Cars’ facilities in Torslanda, Sweden and Daqing, China.

Alongside the hardware and functional packages, ABB’s latest range of OmniCore robot controllers will help to deliver energy savings of up to 20 percent at sites due to their highly efficient power electronics and use of regenerative braking within the robot.

During the deployment, ABB will ensure production remains uninterrupted through the use of its RobotStudio® planning and programing software platform to visualize and optimize the deployment before the robots are installed.

By developing and validating the required automation systems in a virtual space, Volvo Cars and ABB will create solutions that can be engineered once but deployed multiple times.

Volvo Cars and ABB share a long tradition of joint developments to make the production of cars more efficient, and to continuously improve the capabilities of industrial robots in this area.

This project will see the two companies continue to work together over the next few years, with the first deployments anticipated in early 2024.

It is the latest in a series of solutions by ABB aimed at helping the global automotive industry reach its ambitious sustainability targets and transition to electric vehicle production.