Toyota Trains Humanoid Robots for 400,000-Unit Factory Push as $6.42 Billion Annual Upgrade Looms
Updated
Updated · Ars Technica · Sep 22
Toyota Trains Humanoid Robots for 400,000-Unit Factory Push as $6.42 Billion Annual Upgrade Looms
3 articles · Updated · Ars Technica · Sep 22
Summary
Toyota workers are already teaching ELEY humanoid robots assembly-line tasks by using finger-based jigs, part of a plan to deploy 400,000 factory robots across the group.
Starting in 2028, Toyota Motor group aims to invest $6.42 billion a year to add 150,000 robots in its own auto plants and 250,000 more at affiliated parts and materials facilities.
Hiroki Nakajima, a Toyota executive vice president, said the effort is meant to create coexistence with humans rather than directly replace them, even as the company has 18,000 veteran workers across 60 factories.
The scale would deepen automation in an industry long dominated by robot arms and mobile machines; China had 2 million industrial robots in 2024, versus 450,500 in Japan.