Audi Uses Soccer Balls to Build the New Q7

[Source: YOUCAR/YouTube]

The Volkswagen plant in Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia, is where the Audi Q7 is built. The plant is filled with high-tech robots and machinery. The all-new Q7 is the most advanced ever, and the process of building it is complicated and it requires all these advanced tools to do it right. But apparently, if you want to build a third-generation Audi Q7, you also need a few soccer balls.

A video posted on the YOUCAR YouTube channel showing production of the Audi Q7 provides a fascinating look at how the big SUV comes together. Among the expected high-tech manufacturing equipment is something decidedly more low-tech, soccer balls. The exact reason for the use of a soccer ball isn’t clear. But it appears to be used to help guide the nearly completed SUV down the assembly line.

From Sheet Metal to Luxury SUV

The rest of the production process is more like what you would expect from one of Audi’s flagship SUVs. Large pieces of sheet metal are stamped into body panels before robots position and join the pieces together to create the Q7’s body structure.

Once the body is completed, it progresses through painting and assembly, where the Audi gradually begins looking less like a collection of metal panels and more like the SUV customers recognize. Interior components, electronics, suspension pieces, drivetrain hardware, wheels, and countless smaller parts are installed before the finished vehicle undergoes final checks.

Audi has produced the Q7 in Bratislava since the original generation arrived about two decades ago, making the Slovakian plant an important part of the SUV’s history.

Modern automotive factories are technological showcases where automation can accomplish things that would have seemed impossible a generation ago. Yet the Q7 production line demonstrates that not every manufacturing problem requires an expensive robot or sophisticated computer system. Sometimes you just need a soccer ball.