REE to build innovative EV drivetrains at new UK factory
REE is building a facility which will produce its unique 'corner' hardware
Israeli start-up will expand its UK operations, which already include a Warwickshire development centre
Israeli electric start-up REE is building a factory in the UK to complement its development centre in Warwickshire.
The company dubs the new facility a ‘launch integration centre’ that will serve as a pilot factory for the production of REE’s innovative ‘corners’, which bundle suspension, wheel and electric drivetrain into a single package to free up space in electric commercial vehicles, CEO Daniel Barel told Autocar.
The plant will have the capacity to assemble 200,000 corners when it comes fully on stream. REE hasn’t said where the facility will be, only that it will be in the Midlands. The factory will start work from spring next year.
The ‘practice factory’ will still build commercially ready corners, but at a slower rate than its full-pace assembly centres, with the first planned for Austin, Texas.
“If you want to produce X amount a day, it takes some time before you craft it so that it works seamlessly,” Barel said. “If you run at half capacity, that’s still a fine product. It’s just the work you're doing is inefficient.”
REE would then ‘upload’ the settings honed by the UK plant to other facilities, enabling faster production at a rate that is more cost effective for the company. “All the robotics are there, everything is there and we time it, we make sure that it's worked perfectly. We then synchronize it and then we just plug and play it to all of our centres across the world,” Barel said.
The new UK assembly facility will employ 58 people, Barel said.
REE was handed £12.4 million in August by the government funded Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) to further develop its electric corners at a newly established facility based near the MIRA vehicle test centre in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
REE’s MIRA facility is used to test products developed at the company’s Tel Aviv, Israel HQ.
The MIRA facility “employs hundreds” and is bigger than the Tel Aviv development centre, Barel said. “It’s where we engineer all the components, all the hardware, software and mechanics to automotive grade and automotive standards,” he added. The company also certifies its products there.
REE is a success story for the APC, which uses government money to attract foreign automotive companies to the UK. “The work we’ve done with them has brought their R&D here,” Ian Constance, who heads the organisation, told Autocar earlier this year.
REE is working with other suppliers including Magna and US commercial bodybuilder Poindexter to market vans to delivery companies. No customer has yet been announced. REE listed on the New York stock exchange earlier this year after merging with a special acquisition company (SPAC). The company is now valued at $1.17 billion.
*Nick Gibbs*