Toyota plans to spend $6.4 billion a year on robotics and factory automation and deploy 400,000 robots, the Financial Times reports. A Toyota executive says the company’s factories will be the first place it uses the robots because those settings are easier to control.
Toyota’s robotics spinout, Walden Robotics, went public in July with a reported $1.1 billion valuation and $300 million in funding. The company’s plans put Toyota alongside rivals including Tesla, Xpeng and Hyundai, but the report gives no schedule for Toyota’s robot deployments or details on how they may affect factory jobs.
Why it matters
Toyota factory workers are likely to encounter the company’s robots before workers elsewhere, but Toyota has not provided a deployment schedule or explained what the change means for jobs.
