Bus Manufacturing: From Horse Omnibus to ABB Robots

How bus manufacturing grew from horse omnibuses and coachbuilt bodies to integral electric buses, and where ABB welding and paint robots could fit next.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/12/20265 min read

A city bus is built very differently from a car. Volumes are small, every operator wants its own layout, and the body is a long welded frame that is awkward to move around a factory. That is why bus manufacturing has stayed more manual than car making. This post follows the trade from horse-drawn omnibuses and coachbuilt bodies to integral designs such as the Leyland National, then looks at today's electric bus plants, where ABB welding and painting robots could fit, and what the next few years may bring for the factories and for the people who ride the buses.

Small electric city bus with a painted side panel at a street stop in Brussels

A Solaris electric bus on STIB line 33 in Brussels. Photo: Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

From horse omnibus to coachbuilt motor bus

The bus started out as a horse carriage. Stanislas Baudry ran a horse-drawn service at Richebourg near Nantes from 1823, then moved to Paris and launched the first Paris omnibus service in April 1828. London had a similar service by 1829. These early buses came out of the carriage-building trade and were made in workshops, one vehicle at a time, from wood and iron. Electric traction was tried early as well: Ernst Werner von Siemens showed the Electromote, a trolleybus fed from overhead wires, at Halensee in Germany in 1882.

Dark green and gold horse drawn omnibus with large wooden wheels in a museum

A horse-drawn omnibus at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. Photo: Mikey from Wythenshawe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The motor bus arrived in 1895, when two short-lived services ran in Siegen, Germany, with a six-passenger motor carriage based on the 1893 Benz Viktoria. For decades after that, a bus was usually a body fitted to a truck or bus chassis, and the industry split in two. Chassis makers built engines, axles and frames, and coachbuilders built bodies on top of them. Operators liked the arrangement because they could pick body and chassis separately, and damaged panels or windows were easy to replace, which kept buses in service longer.

Early motor bus that looks like a dark green carriage with spoked wheels

The 1895 Benz omnibus at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. Photo: Valder137 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Integral designs changed how buses were built. In a bus like the Leyland National, the body and chassis form a single structure that is practically inseparable, so the whole vehicle comes off one line in one factory. Nationals were built at Lillyhall in Cumbria, and operators were taking delivery by early 1973. Most modern city buses follow the integral approach: a welded skeleton with panels fixed on, then paint and fit-out. Robots came into this work slowly, mainly because bus volumes are a tiny fraction of car volumes, so expensive automation pays back far more slowly.

Red and white single deck Leyland National bus parked on grass

A 1976 Leyland National, an integral bus built at Lillyhall in Cumbria, in London Transport colours. Photo: Jeremy from Sydney / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Bus manufacturing today: electric buses and new plants

Much of the current change comes from electric buses. On 5 October 2026 Solaris unveiled the Urbino 40 electric at APTA's TRANSform & EXPO in Chicago, a 40-foot bus on a dedicated electric platform for North America with up to 528 kWh of batteries. Its first US orders, from King County Metro and San Francisco, will be built in Poland, and Solaris plans to start US production at CAF's rail plant in Elmira, New York. VinFast also plans electric buses for the US, with deliveries from 2028, and in the UK Alexander Dennis has called for stronger support for domestic bus building.

Aerial view of a large factory hall with rows of new buses parked outside

The Solaris bus factory at Bolechowo in Poland, seen from the air. Photo: Solaris / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In a plant such as Solaris's factory at Bolechowo in Poland, a bus begins as a welded frame built up in large jigs. After corrosion protection and paint, the body moves through stations for floors, windows, doors, wiring and seats, and electric buses also get their battery packs. Each station has to handle a long, heavy body, and a 12-metre bus is much bigger than anything in a car body shop. Its size is one reason so much of the work is still done by skilled people with hand tools.

Yellow and red city buses being assembled inside a bright factory hall

Buses on the assembly line inside the Solaris factory at Bolechowo. Photo: Solaris / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

We found no published ABB case study from inside a bus factory, so treat the ABB robots in this section as a likely fit and nothing more. ABB's car work shows what is possible: in Chengdu it supplied painting and sealing robots for a Volvo car line. For buses, hollow-wrist arc welders such as the IRB 2600ID on tracks could weld frame sections in a jig, and paint robots such as the IRB 5500 could spray large panels or whole bodies from rails. Cells this size are normally laid out and tested first in RobotStudio, with external axes for the tracks and positioners.

White ABB robot arms welding car body frames on a production line

ABB robots working on car bodies in a body shop. Photo: ABB

Where bus factories are heading

The push for electric buses and local production will probably bring more automation into bus plants over the next few years. Buy America rules apply to US transit buses built locally, and UK makers want more domestic orders, so more buses will be built where labour is expensive. Frame welding is repetitive and suits robots. So does painting, where an even coat matters and fewer people need to work in solvent-laden air. Battery packs bring car-style assembly into bus plants too, and cobots such as ABB's GoFa could plausibly help with smaller sub-assemblies next to people.

Two white ABB paint robots with black hoses over a car body in a paint booth

ABB paint robots working on a car body inside a paint booth. Photo: ABB

Passengers will hardly notice most of this. They will ride quieter electric buses, built in more places, and fleets may arrive sooner. For the factories, robots promise more even quality across long, heavy bodies and fewer hours spent grinding and repainting. Our post on truck manufacturing shows how another heavy-vehicle trade has taken up robot welding, and bus makers face many of the same choices at much smaller volumes.

A long row of new city buses in different colours on a gravel yard

New Solaris buses lined up at Bolechowo in April 2026. Photo: Koefbac / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Several problems are still unsolved. Volumes are low and variants are many, so a welding or paint cell has to switch between models without long reprogramming, which makes offline programming and flexible fixtures a must. Big robots working around a 12-metre body need guarding and safety-rated monitoring. A full robot line is also hard to justify for a plant that builds only a few hundred buses a year. And plants still need welders, painters and technicians who can run and repair the cells, people who are already hard to hire.

Engineer at a laptop beside a white ABB industrial robot arm in a workshop

An engineer programs a robot cell in RobotStudio next to an ABB industrial robot. Photo: ABB

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