China has over the years declared its intention to build and market advanced humanoid robots and now in 2025, we are seeing results of its intent. Early this year, during the China Media Group (CMG) New Year Gala which celebrates China’s Spring Festival, 16 general-purpose humanoid robots H1 produced by Unitree performed a Chinese folk dance, “Yangge”.
Dressed in floral red and white cheongsam vests, they performed alongside human dancers, capturing the intrigue of the world and amassing over a billion views on the net. Currently, China is the world’s largest electronic vehicle (EV) producer thanks to companies like BYD, XPENG, GAC and NIO.
These EV giants not only want to use humanoid robots in their factories, but produce them. The giants are taking a bold bet on humanoid robots, diversifying their portfolio and testing waters in new industries.
Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC), a state-owned automobile company, launched a 3rd-generation humanoid robot, GoMate, on December 26th, 2024, during its Annual Conference of Robot China. GAC currently uses the robot to install wires in its EV factories.
The potential of GoMate is not restricted to factory work alone. It is envisioned that GoMate would play a big role in major sectors like healthcare, logistics, security and education. It is the company’s mission to mass produce GoMate by 2026.
BYD employed the use of humanoid robots Walker S1, a product of UBTech in October 2024. This was to help ease labor shortage, reduce strains and injuries of human workers due to continuous heavy lifting and quality control.
In December 2024, BYD initiated the “Yao Shun Yu” humanoid robot project by creating an AI-focused future lab for developing cutting edge technology for artificial intelligence and robotics. The project is aimed at developing humanoid robots for factories, healthcare and education.
NIO formed a humanoid robot team in 2023 and it has since then partnered with UBTech, making use of its Walker S robot in its production quality control process. The company further intends to make use of this partnership to build its own humanoid robots.
XPENG released its first humanoid robots “Iron” on November 6,2024 during its AI day event. The robots are already incorporated into the company’s daily operations. Iron was created to rival Tesla’s “Optimus”. The robot has 60 joints (which rivals Tesla’s Optimus 28 joints) and 200 degrees of freedom, with technology shared with XPENG’s AI vehicles.
Why venture into the Robotics Market?
Since the EV market competition cooled with the EV giants dominating the market, industry profit margins have been low. Statistics show that since 2021 till present, the profit margins have reduced from 6.1% to 4.6%.
Humanoid robotics is a fast moving market. In 2023 the global market was valued at $2.21 billion and is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 48%-50% from 2024 to 2025 which could put the market at $76.97 billion by 2032.
The key growth drivers behind this analysis lie in the need for: robots to be made to take care of the increasing aging populace; advance technology and AI development; increased productivity and reduced labour cost through integrating humanoid robots into production lines in companies.
What is the Major Threat to this Huge Bet?
The response of the public. Many people are still skeptical about the use of the internet. The emergence of AI has birthed a lot of conspiracy theories, robots are perceived as a threat in the labour force as many job structures are being replaced by machines.
Conspiracies surrounding advanced AI humanoid robots have been a topic of discussion before they were ever made. This is driven by the fear of AI taking over the world and subjugating humans. However, should these fears be put to rest and the public being able to see the potential good humanoid robots will serve, the CAGR would be much higher than the already predicted value.
Potential Effect of China’s EV giants on the Humanoid Robotics Market
A major distinction that sets the EV giants apart from others within and out of China, is the low cost of production as compared to production cost in other countries or facilities. This edge has helped a lot with their EV production as most /all of the materials used are produced in-house.
Their humanoid robots would be amongst the most affordable products and thus generate a higher influx of production rate and cash flow. This would surely set China apart as a key player in the robotics market. With years of perfecting their craft in battery technology, motor control system, electronic expertise, design and engineering capabilities, these EV giants have the potential of taking the robotics world by storm.
