Dürr is supplying the final assembly technology for Volvo Cars' new plant in Košice, Slovakia, the automaker's first dedicated all-electric vehicle factory. The site has a planned capacity of 250,000 cars per year, with production set to begin in 2027. Dürr's scope covers conveyor, filling, and end-of-line testing systems, delivered under NEXT.assembly, the company's modular concept for bundling consulting and hardware into a single turnkey package rather than separate contracts.
On the measurement side, Košice will run Dürr's x-wheel system for chassis alignment, built around the x-3Dsurface non-contact sensor. The sensor takes high-precision, area-based measurements and works across different tire and body shapes without contact-based fixturing. The driving axis it calculates then feeds directly into headlamp alignment for the LED modules mounted in each vehicle. "Volvo Cars has exceptionally high standards when it comes to measurement accuracy," says Jörg Neumann, Director of End of Line Product Line at Dürr in Germany. "We are very familiar with these standards, as Dürr equips all Volvo sites worldwide with vehicle geometry and headlight alignment technology."
What's new here is the headlamp side of that equation. As LED headlamp designs pack in more individual light sources, the tolerance requirements for verifying beam pattern climb with them. Dürr's x-light system handles that with camera-based measurement of low beam, high beam, and fog lamp output, then adjusts the units semi-automatically to ECE and SAE standards. That's a meaningful jump from manual or spot-check alignment on lines running fewer, simpler lamp variants.
The filling systems at Košice mirror hardware already running at Volvo's Torslanda, Sweden plant, including its five parallel handling consoles, but Dürr has adapted the Košice line to handle low conductivity coolants and next-generation air conditioning refrigerants ahead of upcoming European legislation. Tying it all together is more than three kilometers of conveyor equipment, split across electric monorail systems, skillet platforms, and modular chain conveyors, moving bodies and doors between assembly stations. Volvo Cars is building Košice as part of a broader push to fully electrify its lineup, and the plant's launch will mark Dürr's inspection technology handling its first ground-up EV-only assembly line for the automaker.
