Dürr will supply highly automated final-assembly systems for Volvo Cars’ new electric-vehicle plant in Košice, Slovakia, combining conveyor, fluid-filling, chassis-measurement, and lighting-inspection equipment within a turnkey installation.
The new Volvo Cars plant is designed for maximum annual capacity of 250,000 vehicles, with production scheduled to begin in 2027. Dürr’s scope includes more than three kilometres of conveyors linking the individual final-assembly operations.
The package is being delivered through the supplier’s NEXT.assembly concept, which combines planning, conveyors, assembly equipment, filling, and testing technologies into a coordinated production system. That reduces the number of separate equipment interfaces Volvo Cars has to manage, although the underlying integration task remains substantial.
Final assembly is where the painted vehicle body becomes a complete car. Doors, interiors, wiring, battery and chassis assemblies, glazing, wheels, fluids, lighting, and electronic systems have to reach the correct station in sequence and remain synchronised with the specification of each vehicle moving down the line.
The conveyor network provides the physical timing structure behind that process. Dürr will use electric monorail systems, skillet platforms, and modular chain conveyors to move car bodies and doors through the plant.
More than three kilometres of conveying equipment also creates a sizeable availability requirement. A fault at a critical transfer or accumulation point can interrupt several downstream processes even when their individual tools remain operational, making maintainability and control-system coordination as important as mechanical capacity.
Vehicle bodies and doors may follow separate production routes before being reunited later in assembly, requiring the handling system to preserve sequence and specification throughout the process. Mixed-model production adds another complication because different variants can require different components, work content, and station times without allowing the overall line rhythm to break down.
Dürr is also supplying fluid-filling equipment based on technology already used at Volvo Cars’ Torslanda operation in Sweden. The Košice installation is being designed to accommodate low-conductivity coolants and future air-conditioning refrigerants as vehicle thermal systems and European requirements evolve.
Fluid management is particularly important in electric vehicles because thermal circuits can serve the traction battery, power electronics, electric motors, charging equipment, and cabin. Filling stations need to evacuate air, introduce the correct fluid volume, control contamination, identify leakage, and verify that the circuit is ready before the vehicle proceeds.
Low-conductivity coolants introduce additional controls where liquids operate close to high-voltage electrical components. The production equipment therefore has to manage properties beyond conventional fill quantity, while remaining flexible enough to accommodate later vehicle and fluid specifications.
End-of-line measurement provides another part of the package. Dürr’s x-wheel system will measure and adjust chassis geometry using the x-3Dsurface non-contact sensor, which performs area-based measurement and is designed to accommodate different tyre and body shapes.
The measured driving axis then provides a reference for headlamp alignment. Dürr’s camera-based x-light system checks low beam, high beam, and fog-light functions and supports semi-automatic adjustment to ECE and SAE requirements.
That task has become more involved as automotive lighting has moved from comparatively simple lamp assemblies towards multi-element LED systems. More individual light sources and functions increase the precision required to verify beam position and performance at the end of the production line.
Combining chassis geometry and lighting inspection also reduces the risk of treating the headlamp assembly in isolation. Beam alignment depends partly on the actual geometry of the completed vehicle, so measurement of the driving axis gives the lighting system a vehicle-specific reference rather than assuming every body and suspension assembly is dimensionally identical.
Dürr already supplies vehicle-geometry and headlamp-alignment equipment to Volvo Cars sites worldwide, giving the Košice project an existing technical basis. A greenfield plant still presents a different integration problem because controls, utilities, production data, conveyors, safety equipment, tooling, commissioning activity, and launch vehicles all have to be brought together for the first time.
The factory is also intended exclusively for electric vehicles, meaning the line must remain adaptable as platforms and product variants change. Automotive assembly equipment is expected to operate for many years, so flexibility engineered into conveyors, filling, and inspection systems before launch can avoid costly shutdowns when later models arrive.
Installation is consequently only the first major milestone. The equipment must progress through mechanical completion, control-system integration, dry commissioning, vehicle trials, process validation, and production ramp-up before the plant approaches its intended cycle time.
Volvo Cars plans to begin production in 2027. By then, the useful measure of Dürr’s turnkey approach will not be how much equipment has been installed, but whether those separate systems behave as one stable final-assembly line when serial vehicles start arriving every few minutes.
