The news
Toyota told investors it may need about 400,000 robots across some 60 plants, at a cost of up to ¥1 trillion (about $6.4 billion) a year from 2028, Reuters reported.
Nikkei Asia first reported the figure as 400,000 humanoid robots. Reuters, however, reported that the number covers both humanoid and conventional machines, and that it includes replacements for equipment Toyota already runs. Toyota did not confirm that the spending will go ahead or how many years it might last.
Know more
About 150,000 of the robots would go into Toyota’s own plants, while the other 250,000 would go to group companies and suppliers.
Toyota is also building a humanoid of its own, called ELEY, at its Frontier Research Center. The robot rolls on wheels instead of walking, weighs about 50 kilograms and has two-fingered hands.
ELEY learns a task by watching people do it. Workers wear finger-shaped training tools while they do the job, so the robot learns from their movements rather than from simulation.
“We aim for a world where robots coexist with humans, rather than replacing them,” Toyota executive vice president Hiroki Nakajima said, according to press reports of the briefing.
The pattern
Toyota’s estimate is far larger than anything running today. The humanoids that do production work on automaker floors are still counted in single digits, while the large numbers are targets or training fleets.
BMW: one to two Figure robots work at Spartanburg, South Carolina, where they began by positioning sheet-metal parts and are now moving to logistics work.
Hyundai: the company has set a target of more than 25,000 Boston Dynamics Atlas robots across Hyundai and Kia plants by 2028, starting at its Georgia plant.
Tesla: about 1,000 Optimus robots are deployed, although Elon Musk said they are
“primarily for learning and data collection rather than performing productive tasks.”
For scale, about 542,000 industrial robots of every kind were installed worldwide in 2024, according to the International Federation of Robotics. By comparison, analyst estimates, including those from Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, put the number of humanoids shipped worldwide in 2025 at roughly 13,000 to 18,000.
The counter
Unloading totes is a single job that repeats the same way every time, whereas moving from that one job to hundreds of tasks across 60 plants is a much harder problem. The robotics lead at a rival automaker says the gap between the lab and the production line is still wide.
“Something that is 80% successful in the lab is amazing,” Mikell Taylor, director of robotics strategy at General Motors’ Autonomous Robotics Center, told Manufacturing Dive. “But 80% success is failure in production.”
Toyota’s own number is hedged as well, because part of it is replacement for conventional robots the company already runs.
What’s next
The spending would start in 2028, but only if Toyota commits to it. Until then, two things will show whether Toyota is moving on the plan. One is whether it says how many of the 400,000 robots are humanoids, and the other is whether Woodstock adds robots beyond its seven or gives them tasks beyond unloading totes.
