Automated electric vehicle plant under development in Coventry

REE Automotive, an automotive technology company and supplier of electric vehicle (EV) platforms, has made progress towards commercial production at its Coventry plant.

The company has proven its robotic assembly capabilities, the core of its highly-automated integration centre manufacturing.

The company plans to implement cloud-based robotic assembly lines at its network of highly-digitalised global manufacturing plants, with the first at its European Integration Center in Coventry.

REE’s technology – the REEcorner – packs critical vehicle components (steering, braking, suspension, powertrain and control) into a single compact module positioned between the chassis and the wheel, enabling fully-flat EV platforms with more room for passengers, cargo and batteries.

The Coventry Integration Center will serve customer demand in Europe with an initial focus on the P7 electric platform for commercial vehicles such as walk-in delivery vans, buses, and recreational vehicles.

The Coventry site will also operate as the blueprint for all future REE Integration Centers, with expected capacity of 10,000 vehicle sets 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 highly automated cloud-based architecture 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.

REE is implementing line-side controls from Rockwell Automation and is creating further efficiencies and savings through the adoption of the Plex Manufacturing Execution System. The Plex cloud-based solution’s ability to deliver full visibility into production operations enables scalable manufacturing locally and across global Integration Centers.

“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.”

The Integration Center is approximately 130,000ft² square feet, includes industry 4.0 technologies and will be partially powered by solar energy.

REE Automotive
www.ree.auto