EI. delivers £28,800 cost saving on high-volume automotive production line

EI. delivers £28,800 cost saving on high-volume automotive production line

18th December 2025 | 2 min read

The Challenge

A major UK automotive manufacturer operating a high-volume production lines faced mounting pressure to reduce rising energy consumption and operational costs.

As the automotive sector transitions away from internal combustion engines, many established production lines are entering end-of-life. This makes capital investment harder to justify for OEMs and Tier 1 manufacturers, driving the need for low-disruption, fast-payback solutions that extend asset life and protect margins.

Like many manufacturing partners to the high-performance automotive industry, operations were experiencing:

  • Increasing electricity costs driven by energy-intensive thermal processes
  • Ageing machinery with unknown idle and out-of-hours consumption levels
  • Limited visibility of asset-level energy and performance behaviour
  • Pressure to improve efficiency without pausing or impacting production throughput

To remain competitive, the manufacturer required real-time insights to expose hidden energy waste, direct investment and optimisation decisions and fast, measurable ROI.

The Solution

Deploying EI. Energy Control System for rapid, non-invasive manufacturing optimisation.

EI. technology was non-invasively retrofitted across 13 machines to build a digital twin of the high-volume production line. Creating machine-level visibility enabled the identification of specific inefficiencies that had been impossible to pinpoint through traditional energy monitoring solutions.

Within 24 hours, EI. detected high-temperature end-of-line wash vats were drawing energy during non-operational hours, a previously unseen thermal load and a significant, ongoing cost driver.

Using data analysed and presented as insights on EI. energy reports, an optimisation trial was introduced to precisely control vat heating schedules. This eliminated unnecessary overnight consumption while maintaining wash performance and product quality.

Throughout the data-insight driven trial process, EI. provided real-time validation, a carbon calculator for accurate emissions tracking, and collaborative data reviews between an EI. Energy Guru, operations and finance teams, ensuring decisions were performance-led, evidence-based and measurable.

The Impact

Deployment of the EI. technology delivered immediate benefits in three key areas:

Energy control

  • 13.5% reduction in electricity consumption across the full production line
  • Significant reduction in out-of-hours thermal load

Operational control

  • Improved operational resilience through a detailed understanding of machine behaviour during production, idle and standby
  • Machine-level visibility enabling proactive scheduling and targeted future optimisation

Margin control

  • 13.5% monthly energy reduction
  • £28,800 annualised savings identified from immediate data insight
  • Additional £27,600 targeted savings built into the operational efficiency plan
  • Full ROI achieved in just four months

EI. for Manufacturers

This deployment demonstrates the value of EI. for manufacturers running energy-intensive, high-volume production environments. By providing real-time visibility, actionable machine-level insight and non-intrusive IoT deployment, EI. enables manufacturers to:

  • Reduce unnecessary base loads and energy waste
  • Improve asset reliability, utilisation and uptime
  • Extend the life of existing equipment without capital investment
  • Protect operating margins in a high-consumption, high-cost energy environment

Automotive vehicles on a production line

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