ABB Robots in EV Battery Assembly: Past to Home

Early battery making was bench work. At Thomas Edison's storage battery factory in New Jersey in the 1910s, rows of workers assembled cells by hand. Car batteries followed the same pattern for decades, with lead plates stacked, welded and filled along long manual lines.

Workers at machines in Thomas Edison's storage battery factory. Photo: NPS / Thomas Edison National Historical Park (public domain)

Lithium-ion packs raised the stakes. A car pack holds hundreds or thousands of cells, and every weld and bolt has to be right, because one bad connection can overheat. A finished module can weigh more than a person should lift. Early EV lines still had people doing much of that handling.

Battery pack assembly at Ola Electric's scooter factory in India. Photo: Gnoeee / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB built its IRB 5710 and IRB 5720 robots for this kind of heavy handling in EV plants. They pick and place battery modules and do precise assembly, with cables routed inside the arm so they last in tight cells. At Scania's battery plant in Södertälje, ABB IRB 390, IRB 4600 and IRB 6700 robots work on the line, and the IRB 390 mounts one contact plate every second.

An ABB IRB 5710, one of the large robots ABB designed for EV battery handling. Photo: ABB

The newest plants use even more robots. LG Energy Solution started production in Lansing, Michigan, in August. Robots do most of the work there, automated vehicles move the materials, and about 900 people supervise. The plant makes NMC cells for Toyota's electric Highlander and will supply LFP cells for Tesla's energy storage products from 2027.

The ABB IRB 5720, the heavier sibling of the IRB 5710. Photo: ABB

Stationary storage batteries go through the same steps. For ABB's own battery energy storage business, integrator JOT Automation built a line around an ABB IRB 4600 that covers assembly, laser welding and testing. ABB reports a six-fold jump in throughput.

An ABB robot in the battery storage line JOT Automation built for ABB. Photo: ABB

Many of those storage cells end up in homes, in wall batteries next to rooftop solar. I expect the next lines to take packs apart at end of life too, sorting modules for reuse. The arms that assemble a pack can also disassemble one, so the battery on your garage wall may go back to a robot cell when it wears out.

Two home battery units installed in a house. Photo: Rsparks3 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

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