Technology

You are just repeating marketing. Humanoid robots coming to car manufacturing! For one thing that industry is already heavily automated and further automation will need to be cheap to be worth it. Most of the tasks still done by humans are either very hard to automate, or simply too expensive. Often not because the task itself is hard, but the task can vary a lot, where automation loses flexibility. Another issue is access, where a human can easily snake into confined spaces and even get into the car without damaging anything, this is harder for traditional robots.

However humanoid robots solve none of these things. They are still expensive and have trouble with varied tasks, despite what the marketing says. They are also only slightly humanoid, still being mostly metal, so they can't get into small places and don't have the dexterity required. They can't crawl into the car to get something done as they are large, heavy and those kinds of movement are very hard. The tasks could be automated with some kind of snake like arm with many dexterous manipulators on the end, like the ones used in medical applications, but they are too expensive.

A lot of the hype has been around a pilot program done by the startup Figure and BMW. But if we cut through all the marketing BS and hype for a moment. It was one single robot, in a cordened off area doing a single task. It was picking up large metal sheets and placing them on a welding fixture. Something a regular old robot arm could do easily, cheaply and without faltering. Reports are the robot tripped a lot, misplaced the sheets and was out of commission for a large part of the trial. Which was to be expected, given it's a prototype. It was the second of three planned trials, which has been retired and I don't think the third one has started yet. After those trials, it's yet to be seen if BMW will continue with the program.

Xiaomi is experimenting with their robots in their electric car factories and have done some trials similar to BMW. But they have since shifted away from the humanoid design (although the marketing is still pushing this angle), in favor for wheeled robots with multiple arms. They are optimizing the robots for the more repetitive sorting and internal logistics tasks, which are already automated in many factories by traditional conveyers and sorting machines. The hope for Xiaomi is they can be more flexible in their setup, not requiring the huge machines other factories employ. They also hope to learn and develop their robotics technology so they can sell that tech. Given the low cost of labor in the regions they are located, it is most likely costing them money and the robots aren't intended to replace tasks currently done mostly by humans in that industry.

Tesla is making a lot of noise, but all of their demos have been human operated puppets, or even a human in a suit. They say internally they are doing a lot and it's all very wonderful, but have given very little evidence of that. They have had both a bunch of executives leave and a lot of their top engineers have left as well. Rumors are the project is a disaster, with people who used to work on car stuff suddenly needing to pivot to robotics. Those are completely different fields with different requirements and constraints. With Musk pushing the pivot from cars to robots, the people aren't happy and the project is failing. Even the people that were good at robotics left Tesla to go work at Sunday Robotics.

There are other project ongoing, but the marketing and hype is a far shot from the real world. And like I said, those humanoid robots don't really solve the main issues why humans are being used for those tasks in the first place. The path Xiaomi is on seems much more promising, with robots designed for the task instead of looking like humans.

Car manufacturing has been at the forefront of innovation and automation for a very long time, but I have severe doubts they will actually deploy humanoid robots in a large scale and have it be useful. Show me a robot who can duck into the car and connect some connectors underneath the dashboard and I'll reconsider. And then do it in a cheap, flexible and repeatable way, so it's better than just having a human do it. Because a high end surgical robot could do it and with a couple of years of programming it might even do it all on its own. Until some engineer decides we need a different kind of plug and we need a retrofit. Just having a human do it makes much more sense.

Edit:

And I forgot to mention one of the biggest issues with these humanoid robots, they are extremely unsafe. With a traditional robot it's very simple, it's anchored to one place or moving on a rail. This makes the range it can operate in very limited, which in terms of safety is a good thing. We setup physical barriers, light screens, warning light to signify operation, camera surveillance and emergency stop buttons at useful places. Even large physical disconnects which are clearly labeled and visible for use in maintenence. Inside that box it's a dangerous place for soft squishy things like humans, one unexpected move and the human is gone. But outside that box is perfectly safe.

These humanoid robots are designed to be used in human spaces, that's the whole point of making them humanoid in the first place. But in terms of safety this a now an issue, as you can't have humans and robots near each other. It's fully mobile and can go anywhere the humans can, you can't have stuff like physical barriers or light screens. Camera surveillance is harder and a emergy stop is difficult as well. These robots are no joke, often weighing hundreds of kg. Easily enough to severely injure someone if they make a wrong move, step on someone or fall over. So the only real way to use them is to have them confined to a small area and treat that the same as traditional robots. This makes the mobility kinda useless, as it can't go outside the safety zone. It also makes it hard to design manufacturing processes around these. Usually there are parts of the process that employ robots and parts that don't. For the parts that don't, humans are free to walk around and do their thing, everything is designed such that the robots do what they can and then leave the finishing steps up to the humans (although stationary robots like inspection rigs are used in the final stages). If we suddenly start mixing robots into those human steps, the whole thing needs to be redesigned, probably leading to efficiency loss.