Toyota is teaching its own line workers to train the humanoid robots meant to eventually work alongside them.
Toyota Motor group plans to invest $6.42 billion annually starting in 2028 to bring humanoid robots into its factories, according to Nikkei Asia. The rollout targets 150,000 robots for Toyota's own auto plants and another 250,000 for group companies that make parts and materials, for a total of 400,000 units. The company has already started deploying its wheeled ELEY humanoid robots on assembly lines, where they observe human workers to learn tasks. Workers are wearing finger-shaped jigs modeled on the robots' hands to teach them precise movements.
A Toyota executive says the goal isn't to replace people but to add capacity as factories automate more repetitive or physically demanding work. That framing matters given how much anxiety humanoid robots generate in manufacturing regions, and it puts Toyota's timeline - spending starts in 2028, not a completion date - squarely at odds with the breathless narrative that robots are coming for factory jobs any minute now.
Whether that promise holds is a separate question from what Toyota is actually committing to right now: a multi-year spending plan, not a fully robotic factory floor by decade's end.