Tesla humanoid robot mass production in 2024 Q1?

Recently, news related to humanoid robots has been heating up. On August 29, 18 stocks reached their daily limit, one-third of which were related to robots, and the market direction was very clear. Some leading companies are quickly entering the new track of humanoid robots through various methods and linking them with related concepts. Some parts manufacturers have already made rapid profits from this.

▍Humanoid robot hot spot explodes again

The market’s popularity first benefited from a Tesla robot-related news announced in Tuopu Group’s mid-term report, and was followed by more news.

On August 28, Tuopu Group pointed out in its 2023 semi-annual report that the robot linear actuators and rotary actuators developed by the company have been sent to customers many times and have been recognized and praised by customers. The project requirements will start in 2024. The mass production ramp-up phase began in the first quarter, with initial orders of 100 units per week. In order to meet customer requirements, the company needs to complete the installation and commissioning of four production lines this year to form a first-phase production capacity of 100,000 units per year, and subsequently increase the annual production capacity to one million units.

This news instantly detonated the market. Because the customer mentioned by Tuopu Group is believed to be Tesla, its products may have been maturely applied to Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus. Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus currently has a total of 28 large actuators, including three types of rotary actuators (14) and three types of linear actuators (14). So through the Top Group channel alone, Tesla's 2023Q1 is about 4-5 humanoid robots will be produced, and the mass production plan is worth looking forward to.

Tuopu Group was founded in 1983. Over the years, it has gradually become a leader in platform-based auto parts. Since 2016, Tuopu Group has entered the Tesla industry chain, and with the establishment of Tesla's Shanghai factory, supporting products have gradually become more abundant. On August 23, 2016, after receiving the "Supplier Appointment Letter (Agreement)" issued by Tesla in the United States, Tuopu Group officially became a supplier of Tesla cars.

Therefore, many institutions believe that following a similar idea, Tuopu Group is likely to take advantage of its early success in delivering samples to Tesla robots and then naturally become the core supplier of Tesla humanoid robots. The company that shares the same price limit logic as Tuopu Group is Southern Precision, which was previously considered one of the suppliers of roller screws for Tesla robots. In addition, many companies have also publicly disclosed that they are sending samples of core sensor components.

Tuopu Group's semi-annual report also mentioned the mass production plan and unit price of robots: In addition to the "2 N" eight product systems, the company announced the establishment of a robot division in July. In terms of technical capabilities, it already has the ability to make motors. , as well as the integration experience of motors, reduction mechanisms, and controllers, and the motion actuator sample has now been recognized by core customers. The related core components include six-dimensional torque sensors, roller screws, harmonic or RV reducers, hollow cups, The value of a frameless torque motor, bearings and assembly can reach tens of thousands of yuan.

It was originally expected that Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus would begin small-scale trial production in 2024 and large-scale mass production in 2025. Now it is possible to ramp up production as early as the first quarter of 2024. However, this move has greatly eliminated the uncertainty in the commercialization of humanoid robots, and the industry is expected to build a new growth curve, thereby driving a leap forward in the entire robot industry chain.

▍The development trend of humanoid robots is improving

Coincidentally, in addition to the news about Tesla humanoid robots, recently listed companies can be said to be rushing into the humanoid robot track.

On August 30, Boshi said in a conference call yesterday that it would rely on the scientific research capabilities of the National Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems of Harbin Institute of Technology and other relevant departments. Harbin Institute of Technology will organize relevant professional core personnel from relevant departments to work with Boshi Full-time personnel of the company jointly participate in the research and development and management of humanoid robot projects. Judging from the current personnel list of Harbin Institute of Technology, there are about 30 academic leaders and more team members, involving several majors, disciplines, and teams. It is currently being promoted in an orderly manner.

On the evening of August 29, the announcement of Tianqi Shares also disclosed that it was determined to establish a joint venture with Youbixuan, which is attacking the Hong Kong stock IPO. The joint venture company has a registered capital of 100 million yuan, and Tianqi Shares has subscribed a registered capital of 2,200 yuan. million, holding 22% of the equity of the joint venture company. The joint venture will take the lead in building humanoid robots suitable for vehicle manufacturing scenarios, and will gradually expand to other intelligent manufacturing fields and application scenarios in the future.

Not only that, it was also revealed on August 24 that BYD invested 1.91497 million to hold 3.76% of the equity of Shanghai Zhiyuan New Technology Co., Ltd. (Zhiyuan Robot for short), and is currently the company’s 7th largest shareholder. BYD entered Zhiyuan Robot during its third round of equity financing, showing its future layout for automotive robots. There are also rumors that BYD is also planning to carry out robot-related research.

Some of these companies have been planning to enter the humanoid robot track for a long time, while others are making quick decisions driven by recent hot topics.

For example, the cooperation between Tianqi Shares and Youbixuan has been reached as early as June 20 this year. According to the "Announcement on Signing a Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement" disclosed at that time, the two parties planned to develop humanoid robots in new energy. We will establish in-depth cooperative relationships in the application fields of industrial scenarios such as automobiles, 3C electronics, and smart logistics, and will establish joint ventures in due course to promote in-depth cooperation.

It is mentioned in the agreement that UBTECH Technology is responsible for assisting the joint venture company in setting up a research and development team to carry out technology research and development on humanoid robot body and core algorithms and core controllers such as navigation, vision and control. At the same time, the joint venture's first humanoid robot prototype will be delivered no later than the end of December 2023. Tianqi will be responsible for the development and application promotion of humanoid robot solutions in automobiles, battery manufacturing and recycling, logistics and other industrial industries, and will develop and manufacture humanoid robot servo motion based on the business needs of UBTECH and the joint venture. Joints and other core components. At present, the plan has been officially announced.

Earlier in September 2020, the two parties also jointly invested in the establishment of Wuxi Youqi Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., an enterprise focused on providing unmanned intelligent manufacturing solutions and digital platform systems for high-end manufacturing. Among them, UBTECH Technology holds 36.22% of the equity of Youqi Intelligent, and Tianqi Technology and its subsidiaries collectively hold 30.97% of the equity of Youqi Intelligent. This has laid a good foundation for in-depth cooperation between the two parties.

Boshi Co., Ltd. signed a "Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement" with Harbin Institute of Technology on August 18 to jointly establish a humanoid robot key technology and principle prototype industrialization research and development project, and jointly promote the industry of related technological achievements and products in the future. change. Boshi shares plan to provide RMB 100 million in research and development funding.

Also on August 18, Agibot released its humanoid robot to the public for the first time. Judging from the demonstration, this bipedal humanoid robot named Expedition AI is 175cm tall, weighs 55kg, has a maximum walking speed of 7km/h, has 49 degrees of freedom throughout the body, has a load-bearing capacity of 80kg, and a maximum load of 5kg on a single arm. Although its corporate team lacks talents with industrial background, Zhiyuan Robot has attracted much attention from the outside world due to the identity of its co-founder Peng Zhihui.

Public reports show that Peng Zhihui was born in Ji'an, Jiangxi Province in 1993, and later joined Huawei. Taking advantage of the opportunity of being the owner of Bilibili Technology UP, "Zhihui Jun" earned the title of "Genius Boy" and has more than 2.5 million fans on the entire network. . On December 27, 2022, Peng Zhihui announced on Weibo that he would resign from Huawei to start his own business. The halo-shrouded Zhiyuan Robot is also currently being favored by capital, and has completed multiple rounds of financing including angel round, A round, A1 round, and A1 round.

The company's co-founder "Zhihui Jun" (Peng Zhihui) said at the press conference that the "Expedition A1" aims to control the hardware cost within 200,000 yuan, and will quickly enter commercialization next year. It will first be used in In the field of industrial intelligent manufacturing, it will gradually move towards the home and other fields, which can also achieve ecological complementarity with BYD.

Based on the enthusiasm for humanoid robots, on the afternoon of August 28, Shanghai Lingang Economic Development (Group) Co., Ltd. (referred to as Lingang Group) also continued to reach a strategic cooperation with Zhiyuan Robot Company. The two parties stated that they will give full play to their respective advantages in the industrial and technological fields, closely integrate different resources, and achieve in-depth synergy through various cooperation models. This is only 6 months after Zhiyuan Robot was established in Lingang New Area in February 2023.

Lingang Group stated externally that they hope to use this measure to accelerate the maturity and large-scale commercialization of Zhiyuan humanoid robot products, help Zhiyuan Robot to reach the "1-10" stage, and accompany Zhiyuan to reach "10-100" stage. Lingang New Area has always provided great support for technology and innovation, providing enterprises with great support in terms of office space and funds. Lingang New Area already has innovative leading companies such as XiaoI Robot.

It can be seen that both enterprises and governments have paid great attention to humanoid robot-related technology companies and given them great support.

▍The value of humanoid robot track extension is highlighted

Many companies have invested in and entered the humanoid robot market, and the superficial logic is not difficult to understand. The negative sentiment in the robotics track has gradually disappeared. The stable performance of many companies has taken off with the help of robotics hot spots. Coupled with a series of unexpected policy combinations recently, the capital market's attention and confidence in such hot spots have become increasingly high.

Not only that, as the market enters the second stage of hyping humanoid robots, the tracks continue to differentiate, and the industrial chains involved are getting longer and longer. More high-quality companies in the humanoid robot industry chain are also being discovered, among which Some of them are highly overlapping with the automobile industry chain.

As far as the market situation is concerned, the accelerated implementation of the humanoid robot industry will first give core components a broad market increase, and robot upstream component companies will benefit a lot from this. For example, the field of machine vision has received increasing attention recently, and OBI Zhongguang, a leader in 3D sensing technology, has been among the top gainers recently.

This is because Tesla Optimus previously used the cameras and sensors mounted on its head to discover the surrounding environment and record its walking route, allowing it to walk freely and smoothly. In the future, UBTECH's humanoid robots, Zhiyuan Robot's Yuanzheng A1, and Dacha's Xiao Jiang and Xiao Zi will be connected to technologies such as image large models to form "embodied intelligence" and the so-called "thinking chain." This will inevitably require access to vision and perception technology.

In order to meet the huge market demand, OBI Zhongguang had planned to raise an additional 1.505 billion yuan in July for the "Robotic Vision Industry Technology Center Construction Project" and the "3D Visual Perception Industry Intelligent Manufacturing Base" Construction Project" aims to build a technology platform for the robot vision industry. Based on the 3D visual perception technology system of "full-stack technology research and development capabilities and full-field technology route layout", it continues to carry out robot vision sensors, AI visual perception and multi-modal interaction. R&D and technical research on models, robot OS and cloud digital twin software platforms, as well as mass production testing and digital factories, etc., to further deepen the development of 3D visual perception technology, seize the historical development opportunities of embodied intelligence, and give robots sophisticated "robot features". Eyes" allow robots to "see the world" in various environments.

In addition, driven by the humanoid robot industry chain, the number of applications of traditional servo drives, motion controllers, coreless motors, linear/rotary actuators, sensors and other industrial control products has also benefited from this. Among them, companies such as MOONS Electric Appliances, Inovance Technology, Jiangsu Leili, and Buke Technology received the most market attention. Digital direction targets such as AI large models and data centers are also linked to the concept of robots because humanoid robots need "smarter brains." Combined with the development of artificial intelligence technology, robots can gradually move towards intelligence that can sense, learn and make autonomous decisions. This has many overlaps with the automotive industry chain.

Aggregating multiple concepts, the valuation of the robot sector has rapidly increased. Taking advantage of this hot spot, the current PE of the robot index sector has reached 48 times, which is already 40 times higher than the valuation of the automobile sector. In addition, the return rate of the robot sector is significantly higher than that of the automobile sector. From January 2023 to the present, the return rate of the robot sector has reached 20.37%, while that of the automobile sector has been 9.54%.

Compared with auto parts products, the value of a single robot has also increased rapidly. Musk said at the 2023 Tesla shareholder meeting that the demand for the humanoid robot Optimus may far exceed the demand for cars, and the possible future market demand is 10 billion units.

Driven by the dual drive of industrialization and cost reduction of companies represented by humanoid robots such as Tesla, domestic manufacturers have quickly cut into multiple manufacturing links by leveraging the scale and cost advantages of the supply chain, and are expected to usher in domestic substitution. Best opportunity. From this underlying logic, we can better understand why automobile manufacturers and parts companies have begun to pay attention to and deploy the new field of robots.

▍Conclusion and the future

Of course, in terms of general direction, strategic emerging industries, as the deep integration of emerging technologies and emerging industries, represent not only the direction of technological innovation, but also the direction of industrial development. Since the 14th Five-Year Plan, the central and local governments have successively introduced policies to support the development of the humanoid robot industry, which means that this strategic emerging industry is receiving more attention.

Such as the "14th Five-Year Plan for Robot Industry Development", ""Robot" Application Action Implementation Plan", "Three-Year Action Plan to Improve Manufacturing Innovation Capacity in Shandong Province (2023-2025)", "Shenzhen Acceleration Policies such as the Action Plan to Promote the High-Quality Development of Artificial Intelligence and High-level Applications (2023-2024) and the Beijing Robot Industry Innovation and Development Action Plan (2023-2025) have brought more benefits to the robot industry and will help robots The industry strives to be high-end, intelligent, and green, accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, and achieve high-quality development.

As the most dazzling humanoid robot among them, the future of the industry must be bright.

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