J.P. Morgan: Automakers step up humanoid robot efforts: mass production begins, but widespread assembly-line use remains distant

Mass production has begun. How far away are large-scale deliveries?

Tesla has begun producing mass-production-quality Optimus robots on a large-scale production line at its Fremont, California, factory, but Musk says production is still at an early stage and the ramp-up will be slow and difficult.
Most of the factory’s production line, designed for annual capacity of 1 million units, is in place, but reaching a production rate of about 20 thousand units per week, or approximately 1 million units on an annualized basis, is expected to take at least a year, and possibly longer, because the design is still being adjusted.
Safety, reliability, long-term service life and AI capabilities for completing open-ended tasks remain areas for improvement. Musk expects these issues to be largely resolved around the end of 2027 and is targeting the same time for deliveries to the first industrial customers.

The Toyota Group plans to invest 1 trillion yen annually from 2028 to modernize its factories and deploy 400 thousand robots worldwide, including AI humanoid robots; Toyota Motor itself and its group companies plan to deploy 150 thousand and 250 thousand units respectively.
Toyota hopes robots will use cameras and sensors to learn skilled workers’ techniques, then share the data they have learned with factories worldwide. Its wheeled robot Eley uses two-fingered hands and achieved near-perfect accuracy at folding T-shirts after two weeks and 1500 practice attempts.
BMW is developing open software, training data, simulation and motion planning at its Landshut plant, in conjunction with pilot projects in Leipzig and Spartanburg: it first tests processes using production data and simulation, then gradually expands applications.
Mercedes-Benz believes that as dexterity and platform maturity improve, the use of humanoid robots on assembly lines will become feasible between 2030 and 2035. Its partner Apptronik stresses matching forms such as wheeled platforms and robotic arms to each task, and prioritizes factory safety.

Schaeffler acts as a robot user, a supplier of motion components and a systems integration partner. It deploys robots in its factories, collects data and trains skills, then applies its experience to product development and production integration.
Schaeffler believes its capabilities in linear and rotary actuators cover about half the bill-of-materials cost of a humanoid robot, and that each robot may use more than 30 actuators. The company hopes to lower costs through automotive-grade manufacturing processes and vertical integration, with manufacturing costs for some components or process routes reduced by about 30%.
Its Taicang factory in China has begun mass-producing related joint components and also supplies them to customers for training and testing in real industrial environments. After adding two customers in Greater China in the third quarter of 2026, Schaeffler’s total new humanoid robot orders worldwide rose to approximately 400 million euros.

XPeng plans to mass-produce IRON by the end of 2026, begin deliveries in the first half of 2027 and enter Europe in the second half. The production line it brought into operation in September 2026 has an automation rate of over 80% in its core manufacturing processes.
French robotics company Wandercraft says it has signed 12 industrial customers in less than a year; Renault plans to deploy 350 of its Calvin-40 robots as early as 2027 for physically demanding, repetitive work such as material handling.
After visiting Humanoid, JPMorgan was positively surprised by the speed of its progress: the company demonstrated a wheeled robot performing picking and sorting. Its partnership network includes Bosch for manufacturing, Schaeffler for actuators and factory applications, Siemens for industrial validation, and Nvidia for simulation and training.