ABB Ships 1,700-Plus Robots for BMW's Neue Klasse Body Shops

ABB Robotics is supplying more than 1,700 large industrial robots to BMW Group for the body-shop production of the Neue Klasse vehicle generation, the company announced on November 11, 2026. The order covers BMW plants in Munich, Germany, and Tiexi, China, and the Munich deployment includes production of the new fully electric Neue Klasse models.

The robots will perform welding, gluing, riveting and assembly. ABB frames the program's objectives as higher efficiency, greater precision and more sustainable production across both body shops. The scale matters beyond one supplier relationship: Neue Klasse is BMW's platform bet on electric vehicles, and the automation layer underneath it determines how fast two plants on two continents can ramp output on a common architecture.

"Our collaboration with the BMW Group underscores a shared vision of flexible and future-proof production," said Joerg Reger, Automotive Business Line Manager at ABB Robotics. Reger tied the robot and control package to manufacturing digitalization, and to precision, efficiency and energy savings.

Which robots does BMW get?

The delivery spans three of ABB's large-robot families. ABB's product documentation lists the following family-level maxima, with the highest payload and longest reach belonging to different variants:

• IRB 6720 — maximum payload 240 kg, maximum reach 3.2 m
• IRB 6740 — maximum payload 310 kg, maximum reach 3.2 m
• IRB 7720 — maximum payload 620 kg, maximum reach 3.5 m

The automotive uses ABB lists for these families split along payload lines. The IRB 6720 handles high-precision body assembly, spot welding and gluing. The heavier IRB 7720 covers high-payload assembly and handling, electric-vehicle batteries, press tending and friction stir welding. Together, the three families address both precise body-assembly operations and heavier handling work within the same body-shop program.

Why standardization across two plants matters

Standardized components run across ABB's large-robot platforms, and the IRB 7720 shares its modular design and footprint with the IRB 67X0 family. ABB says this commonality enables faster, more flexible installation when plants change robots on production lines.

For BMW's two-plant deployment, that shared mechanical basis matters as much as the robot count. A plant in Munich and a plant in Tiexi drawing on the same robot families, the same footprint and the same control system can reconfigure lines without re-engineering the automation stack at each site. Line changes become a swap and a recommissioning exercise rather than a bespoke integration project.

What does the OmniCore controller change?

Every robot in the delivery runs the latest generation of ABB's OmniCore controller. ABB describes OmniCore as a unified system for motion, force and sensor applications, with integrated sensor and AI processing, connectivity and cybersecurity. It also supports cloud and edge technologies, which gives the BMW deployment its AI and sensor-integration layer as well as its motion control in one box.

On motion performance, ABB reports path accuracy down to 0.6 millimeters at speeds up to 1,600 millimeters per second for OmniCore-controlled robots. These are product specifications rather than measured results from BMW's production lines. For repetitive welding and assembly operations, they describe the controller's intended combination of precise path following and high-speed movement — the two requirements body shops usually trade off against each other.

Commissioning is the second lever. Integrated communication protocols and pre-engineered software can shorten commissioning from weeks to days, according to ABB. The BMW deployment also pairs OmniCore with a commissioning system intended to compress the production start-up phase, a critical variable during a vehicle-generation ramp-up when every idle line week carries direct cost.

How much energy does the system save?

OmniCore's regeneration technology returns power to the grid during operation. ABB rates it for up to 20% energy savings compared with its predecessor controller. For the IRB 7720 specifically, the combined robot-and-controller design carries a rating of up to 30% energy reduction.

The percentages describe different product scopes, not an aggregate saving across BMW's fleet. The 20% figure applies to the controller generation; the 30% figure applies to the IRB 7720 robot-controller combination. Even taken as product ratings, the numbers explain why energy recovery sits alongside welding capacity in this program: body-shop robotics runs continuously, and regenerated power at that scale compounds across 1,700 machines.

What is at stake for BMW and ABB?

The deployment links BMW's Neue Klasse ramp-up to a common control architecture across two plants in Germany and China. Manufacturing flexibility, commissioning speed and energy recovery become part of the same body-shop program as welding and assembly capacity, rather than separate engineering tracks.

For BMW, the Neue Klasse generation is the production foundation for its fully electric models, and Munich is one of the sites building them. For ABB, an automotive order of this size — more than 1,700 large robots, three families, one controller generation — anchors its position in EV-era body-shop automation at the moment automakers are retooling lines around battery-electric platforms.

The structure of the deal points forward: shared mechanics, shared controls and pre-engineered commissioning are the elements that let BMW replicate and reconfigure production across plants as Neue Klasse variants expand.