As modern-day technological breakthroughs and advances continue, the automotive industry is looking to take advantage of them, including Europe’s carmakers, which have introduced tens of thousands of new robots in their production operations last year.
Specifically, the total number of industrial robots installed across the automotive industry in Europe reached a whopping 23,000 in 2024, which is the second-best result in five years, according to a press release by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) published on June 17.
Indeed, these numbers are part of IFR’s preliminary results presented, and the organization’s president, Takayuki Ito, explained that “the European automotive sector is the region’s strongest customer industry for robotics,” and that it has beaten North America in this area:
“Car makers are accounting for around a third of annual manufacturing installations in Europe. In terms of automation activity, the combined number of 23,000 European robot installations in the car sector was ahead of the 19,200 units installed in North America in 2024.”
Europe’s carmakers lead the way
Furthermore, six European countries are among the top ten in the world’s robot density ranking for the automotive industry in 2023, Switzerland being in first place, with a ratio of 3,876 robots to 10,000 factory workers. Slovenia ranks third with 1,762 units, Germany is sixth with 1,492 units, Austria comes in eighth with 1,412, Finland is ninth with 1,288, while the Benelux countries rank tenth with 1,132 units.
Germany also belongs to the five major robot markets in the world, and its share of the total robotic installations in Europe was a large 30%, followed by Italy with around 10%, and Spain with about 6%. Between 2019 and 2024, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of robots installed in Europe was +3%.
As it happens, Ito will present IFR’s preliminary statistics on the global robotics market and the top trends in robotics in 2025 during the organization’s executive round table on June 25 in Messe München.
Elsewhere, advances in the field of robotics continue, as researchers at Cornell University have developed a new AI-powered robotic framework that allows robots to learn by watching how-to videos, and others have enhanced robots’ ability to feel the materials they touch.
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