Chinese car makers bet on humanoid robots

Tesla showed the world a humanoid robot in 2022 and said it would sell one by 2025. Nobody delivered. So the bet moved across the ocean.

Now a wave of Chinese automakers is jumping in on the same promise: humanoid robots as the next profit center. Companies like Xiaomi are spinning off robot divisions, BYD is building its own, and the rest of the pack is racing to claim a slice of the market before the field narrows. The tech is real enough to build something that walks and picks up objects. The question is whether it will ever actually make money at scale.

Why this matters for us: if these bets pay off, the jobs and supply chains that keep communities afloat could shift toward a handful of manufacturers who control both the cars and the machines that do the work.