Earlier this year, REE Automotive commenced trials of its P7 platform designed for commercial delivery vehicles and walk-in vans. Now REE has progressed toward commercial production, having proven its robotic assembly capabilities—the core of its CapEx-light and highly-automated integration center manufacturing approach.
REE says it plans to implement the cloud-based robotic assembly lines at its network of highly-digitalized global manufacturing plants in its European Integration Center in Coventry, UK. The Integration Center will serve customers 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 automotive company also plans to use the first center as the blueprint for all future REE Integration Centers, with an expected capacity of 10,000 vehicle sets (40,000 REEcorners) this year. Additionally, the North American Integration Center in Austin, Texas, is expected to double its global capacity to 20,000 vehicle sets in 2023 by replicating its European sibling's highly automated cloud-based architecture.
“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.
The Integration Center is approximately 130,000 square feet, includes industry 4.0 technologies, and will be partially powered by solar energy.
Partnering with industry leaders including Rockwell Automation and Expert Technologies for robotics and automated assembly, REE is expecting the first assembly line to be fully operational later this year. To gain full visibility into production and enable scalable manufacturing locally and across global Integration Centers, REE has implemented the Plex Manufacturing Execution System (MES) as well as Rockwell Automation's line-side controls.
“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 share and scale best practices internationally across all plants quickly.”
“We have a world-class team of highly skilled designers and engineers who are leading the design, development, and production of our innovative current and future technologies,” said Peter Dow, REE Vice President of Engineering.
