Toyota plans to deploy an army of 400,000 robots to attack factory automation and take on China and Tesla

The world’s largest car manufacturing companytoyota (toyota ) aims to become a global giant in the field of robotics and is promoting the modernization of its production lines to compete with competitors in mainland China and expand its business beyond the automotive industry.

The Financial Times reported that senior Toyota executives are actively promoting its robot strategy to global investors, which includes deploying 400,000 robots to boost factory automation and establishing a dedicated robot team led by the production division’s top executive as part of a US$6.4 billion annual investment plan.

In April this year, Toyota demonstrated its robotics capabilities at the Toyota Stadium in Tokyo. Q7, a black and red humanoid robot equipped with AI, dribbled the ball on the court and shot the ball into the basket, much to the excitement of the audience; In July, Walden Robotics, a new start-up company spun off from Toyota’s AI robot business, raised US$300 million in funding, with a valuation of US$1.1 billion. The company has deployed general-purpose robots in Toyota factories in North America.

Toyota is clearly using the robot research and development achievements acquired in the past 20 years to commercialize intelligent robots. “I think Toyota has the opportunity to become the world’s largest humanoid robot company. Whoever masters the software layer can control global manufacturing. Toyota is developing its own large-scale behavior model… Because of the company’s large scale, Toyota has accumulated a huge amount of data,” said Wynn of Toyota investor M&G Asset Management.

Goldman Sachs analysts also have the same view, estimating that Toyota is expected to capture 3% to 8% of the global humanoid robot market by 2035, equivalent to annual shipments of 190,000 to 540,000 units.

Toyota Research Institute, a subsidiary of Toyota in California, has developed a basic model that can translate high-level decisions into precise, real-time physical movements and motor control. This set of models is currently used in Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid robot.

Ellie, a humanoid robot developed in-house by Toyota and weighing approximately 50 kilograms, will also use a basic model developed in-house to learn new tasks by observing factory workers operate, especially tasks that require fine motor control, such as moving parts from one box to another.

Toyota hopes to open a new car assembly plant near Nagoya in the early 2030s. It will be the first new plant in Japan since 2012 and will feature robotic technology to increase manufacturing capabilities.

On this occasion, the robot industry in the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries has made great progress. After Hyundai Motor acquired Boston Dynamics in the United States, it plans to produce Atlas humanoid robots at its Georgia factory in 2028, with an annual production capacity of 30,000 units;Tesla The long-term goal is to produce 1 million units of Optimus robots per year, even though they are not currently in mass production.

Toyota has recently stepped up its efforts to boost its approach to robot development under the leadership of new President Kenta Chika, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times, as it realizes it needs to speed up its pace not only to compete with China in the tech sector, but also to hold on to factory production space.

Of the 400,000 robots that Toyota plans to deploy, about 250,000 are planned to be used by group companies and their suppliers.

A Toyota investor said: “They said the first step is to create robots for factory automation and solve the problem of labor shortage. But they are also demonstrating their technological strength, and this could become a model and testing ground for further development in the future.”