China dominates the market for electric vehicles. Now it hunts Tesla in the race to build battery-powered humanoids that are expected to replace human workers who build electric vehicles on assembly lines.
At the World Robot Conference in Beijing this week, more than two dozen Chinese companies showed off humanoid robots. robots designed to work in factories and warehouses, and much more with the precision Chinese-made parts needed to build them.
China’s move into this emerging industry is based on the formula behind its first electric car initiative more than a decade ago: government support, fierce price competition from a wide field of new entrants and an extensive supply chain.
“China’s humanoid robot industry offers clear advantages in terms of supply chain integration and mass production capabilities,” said Arjen Rao, an analyst at China-based LeadLeo Research Institute.
The robotics effort is being bolstered by President Xi Jinping’s policy of developing “new productive forces” in technology, a point emphasized in the brochures for this week’s event.
The city of Beijing launched a $1.4 billion state-backed fund for robotics in January, while Shanghai announced plans in July to set up a $1.4 billion fund for the humanoid industry.
The robots on display this week come from some of the same domestic suppliers that have been riding the EV wave, including battery and sensor manufacturers.
Goldman Sachs predicted in January that the annual global market for humanoid robots would reach $38 billion by 2035, with nearly 1.4 million shipments for consumer and industrial applications. It estimated that the cost of materials to build them would fall to about $150,000 apiece by 2023, excluding research and development costs.
“There is a lot of room to bring down the cost,” said Hu Debo, CEO of Shanghai Kepler Exploration Robotics, a company he co-founded last year that was inspired by Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus. “China specializes in rapid iteration and production.”
Hu’s company is working on its fifth version of a work robot to test in factories. He expects the retail price to be less than $30,000.
‘Catfish effect’
When Tesla opened its Shanghai factory in 2019, Chinese officials expected the electric car pioneer to have a “catfish effect” on China’s industry: it would become a major competitor that would outpace Chinese rivals.
According to Hu, Tesla’s Optimus robot has had a similar effect.
The American automaker first introduced Optimus in 2021, whose CEO Elon Musk subsequently touted as potentially “more important than the auto industry in the long term”.
A child looks at a Tesla humanoid robot during the World Robot Conference in Beijing, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Musk’s company is using an artificial intelligence approach for Optimus, modeled after its “Full Self-Driving” software for electric vehicles. Chinese rivals and analysts say Tesla has an early lead in AI, but that China has the ability to drive down the price of production.
Tesla showed Optimus, a mannequin of sorts, standing in a plexiglass box next to a Cybertruck at an exhibition during the conference in Beijing this week.
Optimus was outnumbered by the many Chinese humanoids that waved, walked, or even shrugged, but it was still one of the most popular exhibits and was teeming with people taking pictures.
“Next year, more than 1,000 of my countrymen will be working in the factory,” read a sign next to Optimus.
Tesla reiterated in a statement that it expects to move beyond prototypes and begin small-volume production of the Optimus next year.
Robots on the assembly line
Hong Kong-listed UBTECH Robotics is also testing its robots in car factories. It started with Yellowish and announced a deal on Thursday to test them on a Audi factory in China.
“Next year we want to move to mass production,” said Sotirios Stasinopoulos, UBTECH project manager.
That would mean up to 1,000 robots working in factories, he said. “It’s the first milestone on the road to large-scale deployment.”
UBTECH uses Nvidia chips in its robots, but more than 90% of the components come from China.
The current generation of manufacturing robots – giant arms that can weld and perform other tasks – is mainly led by companies outside China, including Japanese Fanuc, the Swiss engineering company ABB and Germany’s Kuka, owned by the Chinese household appliance manufacturer Midea.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, China leads the world in the number of production robots installed in factories, with the number more than three times that of North America.
Xin Guobin, China’s Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, said at the opening of the event in Beijing that his ministry had implemented Xi’s guidance and made China “a major player in the global robotics industry.”
The country last November called for mass production of humanoid robots by 2025, but that will start on a much smaller scale than needed to transform electric car production.
“I think it will take at least another 20 to 30 years before humanoid robots can be commercially deployed on a large scale,” said Rao of the LeadLeo Research Institute.