China’s electric vehicle giants are betting big on humanoid robots

At the 2025 CCTV New Year Gala last month, a televised spectacle watched by over a billion viewers in China, 16 humanoid robots took the stage. Clad in vibrant floral print jackets, they took part in a signature element of northeastern China’s Yangko dance, twirling red handkerchiefs in unison with human dancers. But the robots weren’t designed by their maker, Unitree, for this purpose. They were developed for general use, and they are already at work in China’s EV sector.

As the electric-vehicle war in China calms down, leaving a few established players to dominate the field, Chinese EV giants are expanding into humanoid robotics. The shift is driven by financial necessity, but also by the advantages these companies command in the new sector: strong existing supply chains and years of experience building cutting-edge tech. 

Robots like the H1 that performed at the gala have moved into Chinese EV factories thanks to partnerships between Unitree and EV makers like BYD and XPeng. But now, China’s EV companies are not just using these humanoid robots—they’re building them. GAC Group, a state-owned carmaker, has developed the GoMate robot  to install wires in cars on its production line. The company plans to mass-produce GoMate by 2026 for use in factories and warehouses. Nio, an EV startup known for its battery-swap network, has partnered with the robot maker UBTech on top of forming its own in-house R&D team to build humanoid robots.

According to statistics from Shenzhen New Strategy Media’s Industrial Research Institute, there were over 160 humanoid-robot manufacturers worldwide as of June 2024, of which more than 60 were in China, more than 30 in the United States, and about 40 in Europe. In addition to having the largest number of manufacturers, China stands out for the way its EV sector is backing most of these robotics companies.

Thanks in part to substantial government subsidies and concerted efforts from the tech sector, China has emerged as the world’s largest EV market and manufacturer. In 2024, 54% of cars sold in China were electric or hybrid, compared with 8% in the US. China also became the first nation to reach an annual production of 10 million “new energy vehicles” (NEVs), a category that includes all vehicles powered partly or entirely by electricity.

The EV companies that achieved this remarkable growth have amassed significant capital, technological capacity, and industry prestige. Leading firms like Li Auto, XPeng, and Nio—each founded roughly a decade ago—have become household names. Traditional manufacturers that have transitioned to EV production, such as BYD and Geely, have also emerged as major players in the tech world, thanks to their engineering skills and the AI-powered driving features they’ve introduced. 

However, despite the EV market’s rapid expansion, industry profit margins have been on a downward trajectory. From 2018 to 2023, the number of NEV companies plummeted from over 480 to approximately 40, owing to a combination of consolidation and bankruptcy. Data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics indicates that since 2021, profit margins in China’s automotive sector have declined from 6.1% to 4.6%. Last year also saw many Chinese EV companies do rounds of large-scale layoffs. Intense price and technology wars have ensued, with companies like BYD offering advanced autonomous-driving features in increasingly affordable models.

The fierce competition has created a pressing need for new avenues of financing and growth. “This situation compels automakers to seek cost reductions while crafting narratives that bolster investor confidence—both of which are driving them toward humanoid robotics,” says Yao Jia, a robotics researcher at Aegon Industrial Fund.

Technological overlap is a significant factor driving EV companies into the robotics arena. Both fields rely on capabilities like environmental perception and interaction, using sensors and algorithms that can process external information to guide machine movements. 

Lidar and depth cameras, initially developed for autonomous driving, are now being repurposed for robotics. XPeng’s Iron robot uses the same path-planning and object-recognition algorithms as its EVs, enabling precise navigation in factory environments.

Battery technology is another crossover area. GAC’s GoMate robot uses EV-derived battery packs to achieve a six-hour run time, making it suitable for extended factory shifts.

China’s extensive supply chain infrastructure supports these developments. According to a report by Morgan Stanley, China controls 63% of the key companies in the global supply chain for humanoid-robot components, particularly in actuator parts and rare earth processing. This dominance enables Chinese manufacturers to produce humanoid robots at lower prices than their international competitors. Unitree’s H1 is priced at $90,000—less than half the cost of Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, a comparable model.

“The supply chain advantage could give China an upper hand when the robots hit the point of mass manufacturing,” says Yao.

However, challenges persist in areas like artificial intelligence and chip development, which are still dominated by companies beyond China’s borders, such as Nvidia, TSMC, Palantir, and Qualcomm. “Domestic humanoid-robot research largely focuses on hardware and application scenarios. Compared to international counterparts, I feel there is insufficient attention to the maturity and reliability of control software,” says Jiayi Wang, a researcher at the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence.

In the meantime, the Chinese government is promoting automation through initiatives like the Robotics+ action plan, which aims to double the country’s manufacturing robot density by 2025 relative to 2020 levels. Additionally, some provincial governments are offering research and development subsidies covering up to 30% of project costs to encourage innovation in automation technologies. It’s becoming clear that China is now committed to becoming a global leader in robotics and automation, just as it did with EVs.

Wang Xingxing, the CEO of Unitree Robots, said this well in a recent interview to local media: “Robotics is where EVs were a decade ago—a trillion-yuan battlefield waiting to be claimed.”