TURIN, Italy—Comau has developed and deployed an automated edrive assembly line for Geely Automobile Holdings at its Geely Veremt plant in Ningbo, China. The line performs end-to-end assembly of the electric motors, gearboxes and inverters.

Designed in close collaboration with the Geely team, the Comau line uses a flexible automatic production system to assemble the permanent magnet motor rotors, gearboxes and electronics drives, in addition to automated quality control and testing. The innovative solution increases the plant’s automation rate from 40 to 80 percent, while delivering a full-scale production capacity of 120,000 jobs per year.

Using multiple robots to install the motor rotors, the automated line also features 3D vision positioning and guidance, automatic high-speed magnet installation, automatic injection of rotor cores and the automatic dual-position dynamic balance correction, magnetization and more. The electric drive line, on the other hand, includes advanced three-in-one assembly such as motor stator casing, thermal sleeve, motor static testing, motor dynamic testing, automatic bearing feeding and pressing, automatic bolt feeding and tightening, and the automatic measurement and selection of gaskets.

Comau has dedicated significant design resources to the project, including 20 engineers who completed the design phase in just 4 months. The project execution team also overcame additional challenges due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and product optimization changes, delivering the line in just over 12 months. Thanks to the quick and targeted response to post-delivery modification requests, mass production was officially launched in late 2021.

“We have developed solutions that make our manufacturing process more agile and efficient as a concrete result of our collaboration with Comau,” says Geely Veremt Vice President Sun Yongjing. “Furthermore, the automated lines help ensure that our new products will continue to have the same high level of quality and excellence that make the Zeekr a successful brand around the world.”