Robotic Car Wash: Bucket to ABB Arms

A robotic car wash can mean several things. It can be a tunnel full of brushes on a conveyor, a touchless bay where a computer-controlled gantry sprays the car, or a robot arm that follows the shape of the body with a nozzle. This post traces the job from buckets and chamois leathers to the first car laundries in Detroit and the conveyor tunnels that followed. It then looks at this year's news from New England and Manila, at where ABB washdown robots such as the IRB 6790 and IRB 1300 fit, and at the open questions for car washes and for homes.

The entrance and conveyor belt of a Tommy's Express car wash tunnel in Orland Park, Illinois, 2020. Photo: Cleanbean123 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How car washing went from buckets to tunnels

For the first decades of motoring, cars were washed by hand, by owners, chauffeurs and garage hands with buckets, sponges and hoses. The first US patent for a mechanized car wash was filed in 1900, but business stayed manual. In 1914 Frank McCormick and J.W. Hinkle opened the Automobile Laundry in Detroit, considered the first US business to use the name car wash. Even there, people did the scrubbing while the cars were pushed along. A 1925 photograph of an American car laundry shows rows of women in white work clothes, each doing one small task as the cars moved down the line.

Women in white work clothes wash cars at an American car laundry in 1925, each doing one task along the line. Photo: Spaarnestad Photo via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Machines took over the moving part first. The first conveyor-driven automatic car wash appeared in Hollywood, California, in 1940, pulling cars through the wash on a chain. In 1946 a facility in Detroit opened what is described as the first semi-automatic car wash in the United States, with automatic pulley systems but brushing still done by hand. Rotating brushes followed, along with gantry machines that roll back and forth over a parked car. In 1966 Marshall and Elaine Paisner opened ScrubaDub, one of the earliest automated car washes in the Northeast.

An Opel passes between the rotating brushes of a gantry car wash, 1978. Photo: Fortepan / Urbán Tamás via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The next step was to wash without touching the paint at all. Touchless car washes replace brushes with high-pressure water jets and detergent, usually sprayed from a gantry that moves around the car. A few inventors tried to go further and put a robot arm in the bay. In January 2004 Yoshiaki Takida filed a patent application for a robot arm type automatic car washing device, with cleaning tools at the end of an articulated arm. Arms like that never replaced the cheaper gantry, but the idea of a machine that follows the car's actual shape stuck.

A car in the high-pressure rinse stage inside an automatic tunnel car wash in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Photo: CurranH / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Car washes in 2026: tunnels, touchless bays and arms

Most automatic washing today happens in express tunnels and in-bay touchless systems. On 15 September 2026 ScrubaDub said it had washed more than 100 million cars in 60 years and now runs more than 20 tunnel locations in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire. On 30 September, its official birthday, it cut the express wash price to two dollars to match its 1966 price. In August 2026 the Philippine company JETWASH opened an automated touchless car wash in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila, where a computer-controlled cycle of about six and a half minutes washes the car and staff then do the drying, vacuuming and tyre dressing.

A touchless car wash cleans with high-pressure jets of water and detergent instead of brushes. Photo: Sulfur / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

JETWASH also recycles its water. Used water drains into a basin under each bay and is pumped to a treatment machine that keeps the pH safe for paint before the water goes back into a storage tank. In January 2026 a video of a Chinese wash bay with robotic arms spread on X, drawing more than 2.5 million views. Jets cleaned the underbody and wheels from the floor, then arms swung out, foamed the car and rinsed it in less than a minute. A short clip says nothing about cost or how many cars an hour such a bay can handle. It does show arms moving around the car in place of a fixed frame.

Two attendants wash a car by hand at a Sinopec station in Shenzhen, China, 2013. Photo: Daniel Case / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB does not build car wash systems, and none of these washes uses ABB robots. ABB does make arms that live in water. The IRB 6790 Foundry Prime is designed for high-pressure water jet cleaning and washing in harsh plants with 100 percent humidity, has IP69 protection. ABB pitches it to automotive suppliers because it can clean parts of different shapes in the same cell without changeover. The smaller IRB 1300 can be ordered with Foundry Plus 2 protection for water and dust. A car body is far bigger than an engine part, but the job, moving a water jet along a known surface, is similar. In paint shops, ABB arms such as the IRB 5500 already spray whole car bodies.

An ABB IRB 1300 with Foundry Plus 2 protection, built to handle water and dust. Photo: ABB

Where robotic car washes go next

ABB sells no car wash built around industrial arms, so what follows is a possibility. In such a bay, two washdown arms could carry spray nozzles and soft brushes around a parked car, using a 3D scan of the body to keep a set distance from the paint and to reach wheel arches and mirrors that a gantry misses. The path would be planned and checked offline in RobotStudio, much as paint paths are, and SafeMove would keep the arms inside safe zones while a driver gets in or out. Fleet depots for buses, delivery vans and taxis, where the same few models come through every night, are the most likely first customers.

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

Homes are a harder case. Most private cars are still washed by hand or at a nearby wash, and a robot arm in a garage would be expensive, wet and rarely used. The more likely home robots are small ones that do one job, like the robot vacuums and pool cleaning robots people already own. Water use matters here too. Recycling systems such as the one at JETWASH make a professional wash easier to defend than a driveway hose, so for homes the robotic car wash will probably stay a short drive away.

A family washes their car by hand in West Seattle, 1960. Photo: Seattle Municipal Archives / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Price is the first hurdle. A tunnel full of brushes and pumps washes each car cheaply, and any arm-based bay has to beat that. Robot arms working around a car with a person nearby need certified safety zones, and a wash bay is a slippery, wet place to service equipment. Car wash staff are mechanics and attendants who rarely program robots, so arm cells would need simple tools for changing programs, such as ABB's Wizard easy programming. Water treatment and chemical handling add their own rules on top.

Wizard Easy Programming blocks on an ABB FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com