ELECTRIC DREAMS?

The race towards electric cars is now outpacing predictions.?But what does the auto sector need to deliver this reality?

"By 2030, electrified vehicles could range from 10 to 50 percent of new vehicle sales." McKinsey & Co, 'Automotive revolution - perspective towards 2030', January 2016

As a measure of how quickly the shift to electric cars is happening, this five-year old statement from respected market analysts is already out of date.

Today, General Motors says it will make only electric vehicles by 2035, Ford says all its vehicles sold in Europe will be electric by 2030 and VW says 70% of its sales will be electric by 2030.

GM has said over 50% of its factories in North America and China will be dedicated to the production of electric vehicles by 2030.

Automotive manufacturers have already announced almost USD500 billion in investments towards electric vehicle production, with more announcements seemingly every month.

As a result, market forecasts today look very different: Bloomberg suggests that we will reach a tipping point by 2035, when electric vehicles will represent more than half of all vehicle sales, up from only 5% today.?Global electric vehicle production will increase almost ten-fold in this time.

The switch from ICE to EV manufacturing

As we emerge from the pandemic, the automotive industry faces its greatest change since the automated production line as it shifts to sustainable transportation.

And it has the opportunity to lead in sustainable manufacturing – not just producing cars with lower environmental impact but producing them in more sustainable ways.?

The journey to 2035 includes greater complexity in models and powertrains, widely varying legislation and demand around the world and a rapidly changing production mix.?

As you’d expect, the greatest differences in the anatomy and build process for electric vehicles come in the powertrain and chassis assembly, where there are completely new components and processes.

And, they are also produced differently from traditional combustion engine powertrains.?For example, in the transition from combustion engines to batteries and electric vehicles, the architectures are much simpler, with fewer moving parts and their production is much easier to automate.??

With that simplicity is a divergence through the whole manufacturing journey, with changes needed to accommodate the marriage of chassis and body.

More often than not, EV drivetrains are sub-assemblies, produced by supplier partners and only brought to the line for assembly.?And alongside these drivetrains, electrical architectures replace hydraulic ones in EVs, for example in steering, or in damping.

There are other areas that also diverge in EV manufacturing, as shown in the diagram below. For example, considerations for body engineering and manufacturing, in adapting new and lightweight construction materials that offset the weight of battery structures and in revised ‘marriage’ requirements between the two in final assembly.

Divergences in body engineering and powertrain manufacturing processes for EVs

For new electric vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, there is a need to scale and tailor their manufacturing to meet rapidly escalating demand.

For legacy manufacturers and their supply chain, the challenge is doing this alongside the production of traditional internal combustion vehicles.

The automotive industry has always been at the forefront of automation.?Building cars is what created the world’s first automated production lines.?Now, the industry faces wholesale changes to long-established methods and, the opportunity to again lead the transition to new, more sustainable means of manufacturing.

Faced with the opportunity and challenge of this transformation, manufacturers need flexibility to be able to respond and adapt to changes in demand quickly.

The solution is flexible automation

We are the only company providing the full automation portfolio of robots, autonomous mobile robotics, and smart machines, designed and orchestrated by our value-creating software.

Artificial intelligence and automated mobility are allowing manufacturers to move away from linear production, to seamlessly integrated, scalable modular production cells.

Flexible automation can also give you the flexibility to respond to demand, beyond what is produced in a single facility, providing the opportunity to “lift and shift” production from one location to another, as demand dictates.

For example, we know that battery assembly and vehicle manufacturing will need to come together in the future to meet increased demand.?Our battery assembly solutions can be installed close to car production, to avoid shipping and in doing so contribute to their sustainability.

The drive towards more sustainable manufacturing is not just about producing more sustainable cars but producing cars more sustainably.?

If you focus on the manufacturing process, you can achieve greater efficiency and precision, through intelligent robotics.?That leads to minimizing waste and reducing time and energy use in manufacturing.

At ABB, we’re investing in technologies such as our new PixelPaint, which can reduce paint waste and electricity consumption in paint shops by a third.?This reduces operating costs, but also contributes towards manufacturers’ sustainability goals, with each Pixel Paint robot generating a CO2 saving of 46 tons over its lifetime.

A new era in automotive manufacturing

We are in a period of historic change.?This decade is a significant one in the history of the automotive industry and the start of a new era. Manufacturers need to consider new ways of working, to make the most of the opportunity brought by electric vehicles.??

I believe we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest changes if not the biggest change since the very beginning of the automotive industry.

I’m confident that with flexible automation, sustainable mobility will fast become a reality.

Watch my Capital Markets Day presentation in full: Capital Markets Day Presentation

For more on the opportunities flexible automation can bring to automotive manufacturing watch the keynotes and breakout sessions from the ABB Robotics Automotive Summit