a Colorado-based touch-free car wash operator with 25 sites and 66 bays
A Colorado Touch-Free Car Wash Cuts Its Standard Cycle From 8 to 4 Minutes
A Colorado touch-free car wash operator cut its standard wash from about 8 minutes to about 4 with two six-axis arms per bay and 3D vehicle scanning.
- 4 min
- standard wash, down from about 8 (vendor story)
- Up to 50%
- less electricity per wash (vendor claim)
- Up to 80%
- less water per wash (vendor claim)
- 66 bays
- across 25 touch-free sites
Based on a documented real-world deployment. Figures are from public reporting; the organization is not named.
Aging equipment and a sensor problem
A touch-free car wash depends on its sensors and its timing. Every vehicle has to be read, sprayed, rinsed and dried in a sequence the customer never sees but always feels in the wait. When the cycle drags, the line backs up and throughput suffers.
The operator in this study was running touch-free sites on existing equipment when its leadership concluded that the setup was fast approaching a cliff. Interference from the sensors on electric vehicles was one of the reasons cited for change.
The answer it chose moved the work into the bay itself. Robotic arms could follow each vehicle's actual shape instead of a fixed path, and that shift changed the equipment question entirely.
Two arms, a wall rail and a scan before the water
Each bay houses two six-axis arms mounted on low-profile wall rails. Before any water flows, cameras build a 3D image of the vehicle, and the robot supplier describes that scan as repeated on every visit. Each arm handles rinse, wash and dry while staying roughly 6 to 8 inches from painted surfaces, according to a trade report.
Equipment outside the robots also drops sharply in the published description. One trade account puts it at about 200 pieces, against about 900 in earlier machines. That affects maintenance, staffing and the footprint a site needs.
The rollout was phased. The first commercial operation launched four bays after about 14 months of development, and the operator plans two-bay, four-bay and combined three-bay-plus-self-serve formats for franchising. Staff were trained on the automation and on monitoring vision errors, and they can attend preventive maintenance training from the robot supplier.
- Develop the bay concept with the robot supplier and its integration partners over about 14 months.
- Launch a four-bay installation at one commercial site before any wider rollout.
- Train staff on the automation and on vision error monitoring.
- Send staff to the robot supplier for preventive maintenance training.
- Plan two-bay, four-bay and combined franchise formats.
Cycle, water and power: what is reported and what is not
The headline is a standard wash that now runs in about 4 minutes, down from about 8. The figure comes from a vendor-published customer story, and no independent test of it was found. The same vendor page says its standard wash is 50% faster than conventional systems and expects at least another 20% gain.
Water and electricity figures are company or vendor claims. The company reports less than 20 gallons (about 76 litres) of water per wash, and the vendor reports water cut by up to 80% and electricity by up to 50%. A trade account describes electricity at about half of a traditional system's use, and a four-bay installation at a 320-amp system demand, about half that of a traditional touch-free system.
The footprint is reported as 25 touch-free sites with 66 wash bays, the figure used throughout this study. The vendor page cites 26 locations, and the trade report's count is the one used here. No throughput, revenue or customer-count figures for the robotic bays were verified, so none appear in this study.
What this means for a business weighing robot leasing for business
Service Robot Co. is a full-service, OEM-neutral commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We did not run this deployment, and this study analyzes a documented example. For a buyer, the practical lesson is that a vendor neutral robot integrator can compare robot options across manufacturers before a site commits to one system.
Robotic arm wash bays are one approach among several. PREEN Technologies, as summarized by an aggregator as of October 2026, runs six-axis wash bays in Germany, Dubai and the UK with a cycle of 3 to 6 minutes and 10 to 20 vehicles per hour. Those are figures the company markets itself. The same article places conveyor tunnels at about 50 to 60 vehicles per hour as its own comparison, not a measured result.
Our work starts with a site assessment and site assessment mapping, followed by turnkey robot deployment and integration, training, and service through a nationwide US engineer network. Robots reach customers on a 3-year lease, with one fixed payment quoted after that site assessment. Any business considering a service robot should measure its own bay timing and utility data before accepting vendor figures.