JVIS
Assembly Line
How Long Does It Take to Build a Car These Days?
An average car has about 30,000 parts. Once those parts are manufactured and brought to the final production line, it takes automakers about 18 to 35 hours to produce one mass-market vehicle – from welding to full engine assembly to painting.
While electric vehicles have fewer parts than traditional cars, Ecker said the impact on the build time has been minor. “The overall assembly from the time that they start producing rolling chassis frame to the time they get a vehicle out the door, hasn’t really changed much over the years,” said Ecker. “The wild card is the development time in certain areas of the vehicle, like the battery pack in an EV that has thousands of parts in itself.”
According to DirectIndustry e-Magazine, cars in the past would take four to five years to go from the design stage (just the development of the vehicle’s look and basic aerodynamics) to production, but that time is being cut in half thanks to the rapid integration of digital technology throughout the entire process of building a car – from research and development to production.