ABB Robotics is supplying more than 1,700 robots for BMW's Neue Klasse body shops in Munich and China

ABB Robotics is supplying more than 1,700 large robots for BMW Group's Neue Klasse generation of vehicles, ABB said on Nov. 11. They go into the body shops of BMW's main plant in Munich and its plant in Tiexi, China, where they will weld, glue, rivet and assemble car bodies. The order covers ABB's IRB 6720 to IRB 6740 and the IRB 7720, which handles payloads of up to 620 kg, and every robot runs ABB's OmniCore controller.

The order crosses the line Beijing has just drawn through ABB Robotics. China blocked SoftBank from buying the unit's China business last week, and Bloomberg News reported on Nov. 7 that the two companies are considering putting the China operations into a separate entity with different ownership to save the deal. If they do, one BMW program would be served by two robot companies with different owners, one per plant. ABB makes more than 90% of the robots it sells to Chinese customers in China, the Financial Times reported, so the Tiexi share of the order would most likely sit with the China side.

How many of the 1,700 robots go to Tiexi decides how much of this order a separate China company would inherit, and the release does not split them between the plants.