Toyota has told investors that automating its factories will require around 400,000 robots — 150,000 at Toyota and group plants, 250,000 at suppliers. From 2028 it expects to spend one trillion yen a year on this, roughly $6.42 billion. The machines are being taught by the workforce itself: 18,000 experienced operators across 60 factories.
Key takeaways
- 400,000 robots: 150,000 at Toyota and group plants, 250,000 at suppliers
- One trillion yen a year, about $6.42 billion, from 2028
- ELEY weighs 50 kg, has two arms and rolls on wheels — it does not walk
- The robot’s behaviour runs on Large Behavior Models from Toyota Research Institute
- For comparison: Hyundai plans up to 25,000 Atlas robots
Wheeled, not bipedal
ELEY, short for “Embodied Learning robot for Enhanced Yield”, was shown at the World Robot Summit 2025 in Aichi in December 2025. It succeeds the HSR robot from 2012. The build is deliberately modest — no legs, Toyota chose safety and compactness over walking.
| Specification | ELEY |
|---|---|
| Weight | 50 kg |
| Arms | 2, two-fingered grippers |
| Drive | wheeled, omnidirectional |
| Height | 939–1,619 mm (extendable) |
| Base footprint | 478 × 450 mm |
| Predecessor | Toyota HSR (2012) |
The robot’s behaviour runs on Large Behavior Models from Toyota Research Institute — built on a diffusion model, according to TRI head Gill Pratt. The company is extending its Arene platform to robots and has created a Toyota Robotics unit.
Taught by people wearing finger jigs
Workers fit purpose-made jigs onto their fingers and perform the task while the robot learns by watching. The programme involves 18,000 production veterans — takumi?Takumi: The Japanese term for a master craftsman. At Toyota these are the most experienced operators, whose manual skill cannot be written into an assembly manual. — from 60 factories, eleven of them in the US.
The diagram shows how one worker’s skill turns into an asset for the whole group. The last step is the decisive one: the learned behaviour does not stay in the plant where it was formed.
Progress is slow: folding a T-shirt with near-perfect consistency took 1,500 repetitions over two weeks. Hiroki Nakajima, Toyota’s executive vice-president, promises “a world where robots coexist with humans, rather than replacing them”.
A scale without precedent inside one group
According to the IFR, China deployed 2 million industrial robots in 2024 and Japan 450,500. Toyota's plan is a fifth of what China installs in a year — inside one group. Hyundai, with Boston Dynamics, talks about a maximum of 25,000 Atlas robots.
Reuters notes that Toyota did not say whether, or for how many years, the spending will actually happen.
Why it matters
The coexistence line sounds reassuring, but the mechanism is unambiguous: veterans are handing machines the knowledge that cannot be written into an assembly manual. If central sharing of learned behaviours works, one plant's experience becomes the whole group's property within a day. That is the real axis of the dispute, not the headcount on deployment day.
What’s next
- Spending of around one trillion yen a year starts in 2028
- ELEY is already working on some Toyota assembly lines
- Toyota has not said what share of the 400,000 machines will be ELEY and what share other robots
Sources
- Ars Technica — Toyota orders workers to train humanoid robots but says humans won't be replaced
- Reuters — Toyota estimates factory automation could cost $6.4 billion per year from 2028
- Car Watch — トヨタ、生産ロボット40万台
- Automotive World — Toyota plans to deploy 400,000 factory robots from 2028
- Robotstart — トヨタ「ELEY」
