Europe’s OEM automotive sector has been experiencing a spate of investments in new and expanded automated paint shops.

Due to the car sector’s leadership in the development of product and process technologies, the advances in paint applications being pioneered by many of these investments are likely to have a long-term impact on large sections of the European coatings industry.

Innovations in vehicle coatings, particularly in their application, will sooner or later be introduced into other coatings markets.

Europe’s car industry is the region’s biggest investor in R&D accounting for 28 percent of research expenditure ahead of that of the pharmaceutical sector.

In 2018 automotive R&D investment in the European Union increased by 6.7 percent to reach €57.4 billion ($63 billion ) annually.

The increase in paint shop projects stems from the need for more efficient coatings processes to cut costs, eliminate waste, reduce energy consumption and decrease emissions of CO2 and air-polluting volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Another major factor is the need to keep pace with digitalization and automation in order to maintain the international competitiveness of the European car industry.

Some of the most active investors in paint shop and other car manufacturing capacity in Europe are Chinese carmakers who are already applying a high degree of automation in their automotive plants in China.

Also, OEMs in Europe are having to reorganize their coatings and other production processes in the face of a likely big increase in demand for electric vehicles (EV) and their hybrids.

In the longer term, automotive producers are also having to prepare for the introduction of autonomous vehicles with radically new designs of both exteriors and interiors.

The European Union’s EV sales jumped by 38 percent in 2018, according to Transport & Environment, Brussels.

At two percent EVs still have a relatively small share of the total European automotive market.

Yet the position of EVs and hybrids is poised to be transformed in the 2020s with the production of light vehicles powered only to be internal combustions engines (ICE) reduced to virtually zero by 2030.

By then approximately three-quarters of new cars will be various types of hybrids with the remainder being powered fully by EV batteries or fuel cells, according to analysts.

Volkswagen, Europe’s largest car manufacturer, is converting a whole plant, including a paint shop, at Zwickau, Germany, for the production of approximately 300,000 electric vehicles annually.

Meanwhile, the European Commission, the EU executive, is expecting that partially autonomous cars and trucks will be allowed on Europe’s motorways and at low speeds in cities in the 2020s.

They will start becoming fully autonomous in the 2030s.

The new or expanded paint shops in Europe will have unprecedented versatility because of the extent of their digitalization and automation, particularly through the use of robots.

At a recently opened new paint shop of Skoda, part of Germany’s Volkswagen Group, in Mlada Boleslav in the Czech Republic – described by the company’s board member Michael Oeljeklaus as “one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in Europe” – a total of 66 robots are assisting the painting process.

These include a 7-axis new generation of paint shop robots developed by Durr Systems AG of Germany which has the ability to easily reach parts of the car body that are normally hard to access.

The new robot can coat car bodies with a total surface of 108 square meters, compared to the average surface area of present-day passenger cars of 88 m2, according to Skoda.

Digitalized systems at new paint shops such as that at Mlada Boleslav enables the process parameters of each car to be selected individually, allowing scope for customization, particularly in the application of colors.

The identity of individual cars can be digitally transmitted to each workstation in the paint shop enabling specific colors or effects to the applied to the vehicle.

This capability is increasing the production of two-tone vehicles, normally with a different color on the roof compared to the rest of the car body.

Japanese company Nissan has invested £100 million ($135 million) in its plant at Sunderland, northeast England, for the launch of the new Juke compact model, mainly aimed at the European market.

This includes four new spray booths in its paint shop to enable the application of 15 different two-tone body color combinations.

With normal painting systems, the application of two-tone colors requires extra time and energy, particularly because masking tape has to be used to prevent the second color from overlapping onto the basic color.

Automation eliminates the need for masking tapes because of the precision of the robots.

Durr claims that with one of its new generation robots a contrasting color can be applied to a car in a cycle time of 120 seconds compared to about 50 minutes when a masking tape is needed.

State-of-the-art paint shop robots have, because of their multiple digitally-controlled holes in their nozzles, the precision and adaptability of digital printers.

As a result, individual cars can be given different color designs to other vehicles in the paint shop line.

Maserati, the luxury car arm of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), has been building a paint shop at its headquarters at Modena, Italy, for a range of electric models.

Customers will be able to visit the paint shop to watch their new Maserati car being painted to their preferred color design.

Not all significant innovations in the new paint shop are dependent entirely on automation. At Skoda’s Mlada Boleslav plant, cars are moved sideways into the baking ovens instead of the front first.

The hot air from the ovens flows through the window openings and engine compartments which accelerates the drying process with the drying line length being halved.

The plant also has an innovative air purification system that uses ground limestone to absorb VOCs-contaminated paint residue.

The limestone with the waste paint is thermally recycled to be used for the desulphurization of flue gases emitted by a nearby heating plant.

Lowering VOC emissions, of which paint shops are a major source, is an important priority for the European car industry in its efforts to make its production processes cleaner.

Between 2005 and 2018 VOC emissions per unit produced went down by nearly 44 percent but the decrease has been leveling out in recent years.