Engine Assembly: Ford Transfer Lines to ABB Robots

Engine assembly is one of the oldest jobs in car making and one of the last to be fully automated. A block has to be machined to tight tolerances and then fitted with a crankshaft, pistons, heads and dozens of bolts, each torqued in the right order. This post follows how Ford and others built engines on moving lines and transfer machines, and how the first industrial robots got into powertrain plants. It then looks at engine and e-axle lines today, with news from GM's Flint V-8 plant and Hyundai Mobis' new drive unit factory, and ends with where ABB robots fit and what is still hard.

A Holden 5000 V8 engine on display, with its intake trumpets and plug leads exposed, 2015. Photo: OSX / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Moving lines and transfer machines at Ford

Early car engines were built at fixed stands by fitters who scraped bearings and adjusted parts by hand. Ford changed that at Highland Park in 1913, when it introduced the moving assembly line and split the work into short, repeated tasks. The first jobs put on the moving line were subassemblies such as the flywheel magneto, which belonged to the engine. Because the Model T engine was simple and standardised, one worker could repeat a single operation all day while the parts came to him on a conveyor or slide.

Workers on a Ford assembly line in 1913, the year Ford put flywheel magneto assembly on a moving line. Photo: Ford Motor Company via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Automatic machining followed. Transfer machines, which pass a part from one cutting station to the next without a person lifting it, were tried on engine work in the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1940s and 1950s they dominated United States engine plants, a style that became known as Detroit automation. In April 1947 Delmar Harder set up an Automation Department inside Ford's manufacturing division, and its ideas shaped the Cleveland Engine Plant in Brook Park, Ohio. That plant opened in 1951, and machines there moved engine blocks between operations with little handling by people.

Engines waiting on the line at BMW's car plant in Munich, September 1968. Photo: Storz, Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F027640-0003 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

Each transfer line was built around one engine design. When the horsepower race of the 1950s brought frequent changes, plants found the machines could not cope with even small revisions. Assembly also stayed mostly manual, since fitting pistons, bearings and gaskets takes feel and careful inspection. The first industrial robot, the Unimate, went to work at a General Motors plant in 1961 handling hot die castings. Robots later spread through powertrain plants, loading machines and moving heavy blocks and heads.

An early hydraulic industrial robot kept in the Birmingham Museums collection store, 2018. Photo: Phil_Parker / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

V-8 lines, e-axles and robot cells in 2026

Combustion engines are still being built and redesigned. In September 2026 the Detroit Free Press toured GM's engine plant in Flint, which is getting ready to build the sixth generation small block V-8 for full size pickups from 2027. GM had already committed $579 million to Flint Engine Operations for this engine, and in April 2026 it said it would put more than $150 million into its Saginaw casting plant for the new blocks and cylinder heads. On lines like these, robots load machining centres, place heavy parts and run in line checks.

A stripped Rover V8 engine block with its cylinder bores and timing gear exposed. Photo: Lewis Collard / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Electric cars use a different power unit, with an electric motor, an inverter and a reduction gear in one housing, often called an e-axle or PE system. On 2 September 2026, Hyundai Mobis opened its first European plant for these systems in Nováky, Slovakia. The plant cost roughly KRW 250 billion and can build up to 280,000 PE systems a year. It also makes stators and inverters and will supply Hyundai, Kia and other carmakers. Winding stators, handling rotors and assembling gears are all new work for robots and vision.

Aisin's Xin1 electric drive unit, which combines motor, inverter and gearbox in one housing, on show in 2025. Photo: TTTNIS / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

ABB robots fit several of these steps. The IRB 6700 and IRB 5710 can handle heavy blocks, heads and drive unit housings, and the IRB 6620LX runs on an overhead rail to tend rows of CNC machines. Compact arms such as the IRB 1200, or the GoFa CRB 15000 cobot, can fit small parts or hand components to an operator, with force control and vision helping on press fits and bolt runs. Cells like these are usually laid out and checked in RobotStudio first, and machine tending with external axes is a common setup on long lines.

ABB IRB 6620LX robots on an overhead rail tending CNC machines at DAU Componentes, Spain. Photo: ABB

Where engine and e-axle lines go next

Over the next few years many powertrain plants will build engines and electric drive units side by side, sometimes on the same site. Mixed production like that needs cells that switch between parts with a new program and a different gripper, which the single purpose transfer lines of the 1950s could never do. Robots that are reprogrammed in software suit it well, especially with vision to locate parts and AI to spot defects, and they cope with a change of model far more easily than fixed automation.

Engineers with an ABB IRB 5710, a large robot for heavy handling. Photo: ABB

An engine or e-axle that leaks oil, rattles or overheats can bring warranty claims years after it leaves the plant. So manufacturers want every bolt torque, press force and leak test recorded against a serial number, and robots make that easier because each motion and force can be logged. Those records pay off when a fault turns up in the field: the plant can find every unit built with the same batch of parts or the same tool settings and deal with them together.

Engineers with an ABB OmniCore controller and robot cell. Photo: ABB

Cost is the first open problem. Retooling a line for a new engine or drive unit runs to hundreds of millions of dollars, as GM's spending shows, and carmakers have to guess how quickly demand will move between combustion and electric drives. Skills are the second, because robot cells need trained technicians to program and maintain them, and tools like no code robot programming are meant to help. Safety changes too when people work near robots lifting heavy blocks, which is why guarding and safety controllers such as ABB's SafeMove go into these cells.

A worker assembles an aircraft engine at North American Aviation in California, June 1942, a reminder that engine work still depends on skilled people. Photo: Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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