• Through 2025, more than 1,000 humanoids are expected to be deployed in auto factories, mainly in China and North America, with the auto industry representing around 9% of the total humanoid installations worldwide.

• Annual humanoid installations across the auto industry are expected to exceed 50,000 by 2030 at a 102% CAGR.

With the sensational debut of its new IRON robot on November 5, China’s star electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Xpeng once again demonstrated its frontier humanoid development capabilities. Just two days later, Elon Musk, speaking at Tesla’s annual shareholders’ meeting, once again expressed his ambition of making Tesla the largest humanoid robot company. With Optimus being positioned as the company’s future growth engine, Musk said Tesla would produce millions of Optimus robots in the coming years, and in the course of production expansion, the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) per Optimus robot would finally be brought down to $20,000.

Both EV companies are targeting the trillion-dollar market potential of general-purpose humanoids and enabling E2E solutions, including in-house AI chips and models for the IRON and Optimus, respectively. With accumulated expertise in AI and autonomous driving, automotive manufacturers, particularly EV companies, currently have advantages in developing and training the required Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models. Secondly, factories of vehicle manufacturers and integrators are ideal places to employ various humanoid robots for structured tasks such as sorting and transporting materials and assembling parts with high precision. Last but not least, there are overlaps between the humanoid and automotive supply chains. Companies like Tesla and Xpeng can procure relatively cheaper components and customize miniaturized and high-quality sub-components to fit the limited space of dexterous hands.

Besides humanoid robots being developed by EV companies, there are humanoid startups in China and the US, including Figure AI, Leju Robot, SANCTUARY AI and UBTECH. These have achieved significant progress by testing and refining products in the world's leading automated car plants. The adoption of humanoid robots in the auto industry is undergoing a transition from pilot testing to deployment.

Auto Industry to Represent 20% of Annual Installations of Humanoid Robots in 2030

According to Counterpoint Research’s Robotics Research, through 2025, more than 1,000 humanoid robots are expected to be deployed in car plants globally, accounting for nearly 9% of the annual humanoid installations. In the next five years, the automotive industry will be the most active adopter of humanoid robots, and the proportion of annual installations for auto applications will reach around 20% in 2030.

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