Humanoid robots on the factory floor: what Hyundai, Tesla and China are actually doing

Humanoid robots are moving into car plants, but not yet at the pace the demo videos suggest. The clearest sign of friction came at Hyundai's Ulsan complex in South Korea. Unionized workers ended day and night shifts two hours early from July 13 to July 15. They planned four-hour strikes from July 20 to 22 after 15 rounds of negotiations failed, The Korea Times reported, as cited by Ars Technica.

The dispute centers on Atlas, the two-legged humanoid made by Boston Dynamics. It stands more than 6 feet tall and can lift more than 100 pounds. Hyundai Motor Group showed the latest version at the start of this year. According to The Korea Herald, Hyundai wants to deploy more than 25,000 Atlas robots across Hyundai and Kia plants, starting with US factories in 2028. No timeline for other countries has been disclosed.

What the robots cost, and what they replace

Each Atlas is estimated at $130,000 but may pay for itself within about two years, Samsung Securities analyst Esther Yim told Bloomberg. James Hong of Macquarie Securities Korea Ltd. suggested that if the price falls to $100,000, the operating cost could drop below the US federal minimum wage of $7.25 and undercut a typical auto worker's salary.

Hyundai's union, which represents more than 39,000 South Korean workers, wants hourly pay for production workers shifted to a fixed salary to cushion any automation-driven cut in hours. It also wants the retirement age raised from 60 to 65, according to The Wall Street Journal. The union has asked for bigger bonuses.

Hyundai is not alone. Tesla is developing Optimus for its EV factories, and BMW has run pilot tests with Figure AI robots in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Chinese automakers including BYD are testing humanoids too.

Industrial robots are not new. More than 1 million were already in automotive factories worldwide by 2021, a third of all robots across industries, per the International Federation of Robotics. The US had deployed 38,000 industrial robots as of 2025, 13,500 of them in automotive.

The AI layer arrives

The difference now is software. At CES in January 2026, Google DeepMind and Boston Dynamics announced that Google's Gemini Robotics model would run on Atlas and the robot dog Spot. Tests are planned at Hyundai factories in the following months.

"The real value going forward is for our robots to be contextually aware of their environment and able to use their hands to manipulate any object," Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter told WIRED. "And we think manufacturing environments, like in Hyundai factories, are a perfect place to deploy that today." Carolina Parada, senior director of robotics at Google DeepMind, told WIRED that automotive is a good starting point but that the intention is to expand to more applications.

Hyundai's first US deployment target is Metaplant America, its EV factory outside Savannah, Georgia. Atlas would begin by sorting and organizing parts in 2028. Jerald Roach, a general assembly executive there, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that humanoids will not threaten the human workforce. He argued that hands with a sense of feel are needed for soft parts such as hoses, wires, carpets and trim panels.

That plant is already the most heavily automated automotive factory in the US, with more than 850 robots and 300 automated guided vehicles, according to IEEE Spectrum. An AJC reporter visiting in July 2026 saw Boston Dynamics' four-legged Spot inspecting welds. Hyundai has committed to 8,100 full-time workers there by 2031 under a Georgia incentive package worth about $2.1 billion. The plant had more than 3,800 workers at the end of 2025.

China's data problem

China is attacking the bottleneck from a different angle: training data. Local governments have announced more than 40 state-owned robot data collection centers, about two dozen already operating, according to Interact Analysis. At a Beijing camp covering over 10,000 square meters, 16 scenarios include a mock car assembly line. In Hubei, nearly 100 humanoids controlled by humans practise folding clothes and wiping tables hundreds of times a day. One trainer, a 20-year-old student speaking under the pseudonym Kim, told Rest of World: "We call ourselves cyber-laborers."

The spectacle side is loud. At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on August 22 to 26, robots beat human records in the 100-meter sprint and standing high jump. Some crashed into barriers, broke at the waist or caught fire, Ars Technica reported. Purdue PhD student Dipam Patel told Ars that such robots are engineered for one task, and that many competitors were still teleoperated.

The practical events tell a plainer story: in an outdoor firefighting challenge, only three of 12 teams finished.