BYD Enters the Humanoid Robot Race with 150 Prototypes Already Running in Its Own Factories

Level 2 - Elementary

BYD, the Chinese company that became the world's largest electric-vehicle maker in 2024, has officially confirmed that it is developing humanoid robots. Executive Vice President Stella Li announced the strategy, revealing that around 150 prototypes are already being tested inside BYD's own manufacturing plants.

The project began in 2022 under BYD's 15th Business Unit, a division focused on electronic integration and intelligent systems. It is codenamed 'Yao-Shun-Yu.' BYD believes its many years of experience in building motors, batteries, sensors and precision electronics give it a natural advantage in the humanoid robotics sector.

BYD plans to deploy 20,000 robots in its own factories during 2026. Looking further ahead, the company is constructing a new industrial park in Xi'an designed to produce up to 50,000 humanoid robots annually. If the robots eventually become available to ordinary consumers, BYD plans to sell them through its existing network of car dealerships.

BYD joins a crowded field of companies competing to lead the humanoid robotics market, including Tesla, Boston Dynamics, Figure AI and China's own Unitree Robotics. Analysts believe the technology could transform manufacturing, logistics and eventually household chores, but most commercial applications are still several years away from large-scale deployment.

executive vice president: a very senior manager at a company, typically responsible for a major area of business

electronic integration: combining electronic components and systems so they work together smoothly in a single device or product

precision manufacturing: a type of manufacturing that produces parts with extremely accurate measurements and tight tolerances

deployment: putting something such as technology or equipment into active use in the real world

sensor: a device that detects and responds to physical inputs such as light, temperature or movement

logistics: the process of planning and managing the movement and storage of goods

dealership: a shop or business that is authorised to sell a particular brand's products

large-scale: involving a very large number of units or a very wide area, as opposed to a small or limited trial

Level 3 - Intermediate

BYD, which surpassed Tesla in global electric-vehicle unit sales in 2024 and has since extended its lead, has made its most direct public statement yet about ambitions that extend well beyond automobiles. In an interview programme, Executive Vice President Stella Li confirmed that around 150 humanoid robot prototypes are already undergoing operational testing inside BYD factories. The project, internally codenamed 'Yao-Shun-Yu,' has been quietly running since 2022 under the 15th Business Unit, which concentrates on electronic integration, intelligent systems and the kind of precision hardware manufacturing that BYD has honed over two decades of EV production.

Li argued that BYD's competitive moat in humanoid robotics is not software alone but the full vertical stack: the company designs and manufactures its own motors, battery packs, sensors and chips, giving it cost and supply-chain advantages that robotics-focused pure-plays find difficult to match. This mirrors BYD's established EV strategy, in which deep vertical integration - including its own blade battery technology and DiLink connected-car platform - allowed it to undercut foreign rivals on price while maintaining competitive margins.

The company's near-term deployment plan is ambitious. BYD intends to put 20,000 humanoid robots to work inside its own facilities across China during 2026, using them for precision assembly, material handling and quality inspection tasks where repeatability and sensor accuracy are critical. A new dedicated industrial park under construction in Xi'an will eventually scale production to 50,000 units per year. BYD has also indicated that should robotic capability and cost reach the threshold for household applications, it would leverage its nationwide network of over 10,000 car dealerships as the distribution channel.

The announcement places BYD firmly in a rapidly intensifying global race. Tesla's Optimus is in limited factory deployment, Boston Dynamics Atlas has moved to commercial sales, and Figure AI's humanoid 'Jim' recently completed an 81-hour autonomous logistics livestream. Chinese rivals Unitree Robotics and UBTECH are also scaling rapidly. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that the global humanoid robotics market will reach 38 billion dollars by 2035 under a base-case scenario, with a more optimistic scenario closer to 154 billion dollars if unit economics fall faster than expected through the decade.

competitive moat: a durable structural advantage that protects a company from competition, such as superior technology, brand loyalty or exclusive supply chains

vertical integration: a business strategy in which a company controls multiple stages of its production process, from raw materials to finished product

pure-play: a company focused exclusively on one product or market, as opposed to a diversified conglomerate

blade battery: BYD's proprietary lithium iron phosphate battery technology, designed in a flat blade shape for improved safety, energy density and packaging efficiency

material handling: the process of moving, storing and protecting goods and materials within a warehouse or factory

repeatability: the ability of a robot or machine to perform the same action to the same level of precision over many repeated cycles

threshold: the minimum level at which something becomes feasible, effective or worthwhile

unit economics: the revenues and costs associated with producing and selling a single unit of a product, used to assess profitability at scale

Level 4 - Advanced

BYD's formal acknowledgement of its humanoid robotics programme - confirmed by Executive Vice President Stella Li in a recent broadcast interview that disclosed approximately 150 operational prototypes already running in production environments - transforms what had been an open secret among industry observers into a declared strategic priority for the world's largest electric-vehicle manufacturer by unit volume. The programme, codenamed 'Yao-Shun-Yu' and housed within the 15th Business Unit since inception in 2022, represents the most substantive bet yet by a legacy industrial manufacturer to parlay deep competencies in electromechanics, power electronics and precision assembly into the embodied-intelligence market that Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, Tesla's Optimus and China's own Unitree and UBTECH have been developing for the better part of a decade.

Li's competitive argument rests on a structural logic that echoes BYD's successful EV playbook: the superiority of full vertical integration over the modular, best-of-breed assembly that most pure-play robotics firms rely upon. BYD in-houses its drivetrain motors, lithium iron phosphate and ternary blade cells, ADAS sensor suites and the RISC-V-adjacent application processors that run its DiLink OS, and Li claims those same competencies translate directly to actuator torque control, battery-powered locomotion endurance, force-feedback sensor fusion and the real-time edge inference required for dexterous manipulation in unstructured factory environments. The cost arithmetic, she argues, is decisive: BYD can procure actuators, harmonic-drive gear sets and torque sensors for its robots at the same transfer prices it negotiates for its EV supply chain, a scale advantage that a 500-unit pure-play robotics startup cannot replicate.

The phased production roadmap disclosed is material. The 20,000-unit internal deployment target for calendar 2026 positions BYD's own Shenzhen, Xi'an and Hefei gigafactories as the primary proving ground for precision assembly, automated quality-inspection and material-handling use cases, deliberately avoiding the public demonstrations and media showcases that have characterised competitors' go-to-market approaches. The Xi'an industrial park, whose first production phase is scheduled for completion by mid-2027 with an initial 50,000-unit annual nameplate capacity, will be purpose-built for Series A manufacturing processes rather than prototype hand-assembly, giving BYD a potentially decisive head start in the unit-cost reduction curve that governs commercial viability.

The strategic significance of BYD's entry extends beyond a single company's diversification. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has identified humanoid robotics as a key sector under the 15th Five-Year Plan's intelligent-manufacturing pillar, and BYD's participation - with its direct channel to the world's largest manufacturing base and its established 10,000-outlet dealer distribution infrastructure - substantially de-risks the government's ambition to establish a domestic supply chain that is not dependent on Boston Dynamics' Spot robot, which is subject to US export controls, or on firmware components manufactured outside the People's Republic. Goldman Sachs' 38-billion-dollar base-case and 154-billion-dollar bull-case projections for the 2035 addressable market assume unit-cost learning curves broadly comparable to those observed in lithium-ion batteries between 2012 and 2024 - a comparison that is simultaneously compelling and cautionary, given that the humanoid robot must coordinate a vastly more complex hierarchy of sensing, actuation and inference than a passive energy-storage cell.

embodied intelligence: artificial intelligence that is physically instantiated in a robot or autonomous system that perceives and acts in the real world, as opposed to software-only AI

actuator torque control: the precise management of the rotational force produced by a robotic joint's motor, critical for smooth and accurate movement

harmonic-drive gear set: a type of precision speed-reduction mechanism widely used in robotic joints to achieve high torque, low backlash and compact size

dexterous manipulation: the ability of a robotic hand or arm to handle objects with the same flexibility and precision as a human hand

nameplate capacity: the maximum output that a production facility is designed to achieve under normal operating conditions

unit-cost learning curve: the principle that the cost of producing each unit falls predictably as cumulative production volume increases and manufacturing processes improve

15th Five-Year Plan: China's national economic and social development plan for the period 2026 to 2030, setting strategic targets across industries identified as nationally important

transfer price: the internal price at which components or services are exchanged between divisions of the same company, often reflecting volume-discount purchasing power

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Level 2 - Elementary

Level 3 - Intermediate

Level 4 - Advanced

BYD Enters the Humanoid Robot Race with 150 Prototypes Already Running in Its Own Factories

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