Two of Japan's biggest carmakers have shown new robots, and almost every report about them gets a basic fact wrong. AI robots in car manufacturing are arriving, but not in the shape the headlines suggest.
Toyota's ELEY is not a humanoid. Honda's Avatar Robot is not designed to build cars at all.
Both of those statements come from the companies' own published material, and both contradict how this story is being told.
What the Toyota ELEY Robot Actually Is
ELEY stands for Embodied Learning robot for Enhanced Yield, and Toyota's Frontier Research Center describes it precisely.
It has two human-like arms capable of skillful movements mounted on an omnidirectional mobile base. In plain terms: it has arms like a person and wheels instead of legs, and the base can travel in any direction without turning first.
The clever part is its reach. ELEY extends its own height from 939 mm to 1,619 mm, so one machine can pick something off the floor and then work at a high shelf. It weighs 50 kg.
That is a mobile manipulator, not a humanoid. Yet coverage of Toyota's plans routinely calls it one — and in one trade report the photo caption describes a humanoid while the article's own text correctly describes a wheeled 50 kg robot. The error is travelling through captions.
The 400,000-Robot Report, and What Toyota Has Said
The number driving the coverage is enormous. Toyota is reported to be planning the gradual deployment of up to 400,000 in-house robots from 2028 — around 150,000 at its headquarters plants and 250,000 across roughly 60 group facilities worldwide.
The reported investment is about JPY 1 trillion a year, roughly US$6.4 billion, beginning in 2028, with the robots arriving alongside factory upgrades tied to new models and added capacity.
Read the sourcing carefully, though. That programme is attributed to local reports and framed as what Toyota is understood to be planning. Toyota has not confirmed it.
The company's one direct statement on the matter is about people rather than numbers: robots "are not meant to replace humans, but will coexist with humans". And note the tension — the reported fleet is described as humanoid, while the only robot Toyota has actually named and shown rolls on wheels.
Honda's Avatar Robot Is Not a Car-Building Robot
This is where the story is most often misreported. Honda demonstrated the Honda Avatar Robot at CEATEC 2026 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, which ran from 13 to 16 October 2026, and set out what it does in its own exhibit announcement.
Honda calls it a "second self of the user". It combines a multi-fingered hand with dexterity and strength the company compares to a human hand, plus an AI support system that assists the operator so tasks can be completed without them being physically present.
And here are the applications Honda itself names: healthcare, facility maintenance, disaster response and space development. Car factories are not on that list.
So this is a remote-presence system for places people cannot easily reach or should not be, not an assembly-line robot. Honda's aim, in its own framing, is letting people work beyond the limits of time, place and physical ability.
Three Different Things That Get Called the Same Thing
Most of the confusion in this topic comes from one word doing too much work.
| Type | What it is | Example here |
|---|---|---|
| Industrial robot arm | Fixed to one spot, repeats a programmed motion precisely. Already builds most cars | Welding and paint lines |
| Mobile manipulator | Arms on a moving base; goes to the work instead of the work coming to it | Toyota ELEY |
| Teleoperated avatar | A person operates it remotely; AI assists with movement and grip | Honda Avatar Robot |
| Humanoid | Human body shape, typically two legs. Neither robot above is one | Not in this story |
The practical difference matters: a fixed arm needs the part brought to it, a mobile manipulator can be redeployed between stations, and a teleoperated system still needs a human in the loop.
Will Robots Replace Car Factory Workers?
Nothing in either programme demonstrates a car being built autonomously end to end. A vehicle is thousands of connected operations, each needing its own tooling, safety case, quality checks and line integration.
A learning robot that can pick and place parts is not the same as a factory that runs itself. A teleoperated hand explicitly requires a person operating it.
What a flexible mobile robot genuinely changes is who does the repetitive lifting and reaching, and how quickly a line can be reconfigured for a new model. Supervision, training, quality judgement and fault diagnosis stay human for the foreseeable future.
What This Means for Pakistan: Honestly, Not Much Yet
A programme costing billions a year is justified by volume, and Pakistan's assembly plants build a fraction of what a Japanese headquarters plant does. Capital at that scale does not follow those volumes.
Where manufacturing capability here is actually changing is policy: localisation targets, parts tariffs and the proposed testing and certification institute. See our pieces on the proposed automotive testing institute and the car parts duty cut.
One thing from the same Honda exhibit is closer to home, though. Alongside the robot, Honda showed a driver-assistance app that pairs a phone with an aftermarket camera to warn of nearby road users — the kind of technology that reaches ordinary cars through accessories rather than through factories.
Final Thoughts
The useful summary on AI robots in car manufacturing is narrower than the headlines: Toyota has a 50 kg wheeled robot with two arms that learns factory tasks, and a large deployment programme that Toyota itself has not confirmed. Honda has a remote-operated hand aimed at hospitals and disaster sites.
Neither is a humanoid, and only one is about building cars. Meanwhile the cars already on Pakistan's roads are still fitted and maintained by people our Toyota accessories and Honda accessories are fitted in-house in Multan.
15+ years in business · In-house fitting in Multan · Nationwide delivery · Exact-fit products, never universal
Questions about what fits your car? Contact us — 0321-1117525 · Open Mon–Sun, 9am–9pm.
