REE Automotive takes major step towards commercial EV production

Electric vehicle company REE Automotive has taken a major step fowards at its Coventry facility toward producing a platform for EVs.

The company has proven its cloud-based robotic assembly line at its European Integration Centre.

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

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

Josh Tech, chief operating officer at REE, said: “This is 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.

“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 Coventry centre will operate as the blueprint for all future REE Integration Centres, with expected capacity of 10,000 vehicle sets this year.

The North American Integration Centre 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 integration centre is approximately 130,000 sq ft and will be partially powered by solar energy.