Robots will join Toyota’s assembly lines at one for every two workers: 400,000 machines planned

Starting in 2028, Toyota will deploy around 400 thousand robots across roughly 60 plants worldwide.

F. Fabulinnews writer

Toyota workers put finger-shaped attachments on their hands and perform a familiar operation. That is how ELEY learns.

In two weeks and 1500 repetitions, the robot learned to fold T-shirts almost without errors. The company showed this on 18 September at a briefing at its European headquarters.

At the same event, Toyota CTO Hiroki Nakajima gave the scale: from 2028, the group will deploy around 400 thousand robots across roughly 60 plants. That is comparable to half its factory workforce, while Toyota has around 391 thousand employees overall.

**Robots alongside people, not instead of them.** “We are striving for a world where robots coexist with people rather than replace them,” Nakajima said at the investor briefing. Of the 400 thousand machines, 150 thousand will go to Toyota's own plants, while the other 250 thousand will go to group companies and major suppliers, including 10 plants in the US.

The count is not just humanoids. Toyota includes both replacements for machines already on production lines and new installations in that figure, humanoid and non-humanoid alike. The rollout will stretch over several years of plant upgrades.

ELEY itself weighs 50 kg, moves on omnidirectional wheels rather than legs, and extends in height from 94 cm to 1,6 m. With both hands, it can hold a box and remove its contents at the same time. Toyota first showed the machine on 5 December 2025 at the World Robot Summit in Aichi, so the September news is about scale, not a debut.

ELEY learns from demonstration rather than simulation. It runs on Toyota Research Institute's Large Behavior Model: around 1700 hours of robot data, while a new task on top of such a model needs 3–5 times less data than training from scratch. Its movements are recorded from 18 thousand takumi masters.

For plant modernization from 2028, Toyota is allocating around 1 trillion yen per year, about $6,4 billion. The estimate includes buildings, equipment, power, connectivity, digital twins, and AI infrastructure, with no separate line item for robots.

Deployment begins in 2028; only then will it become clear how many of the 400 thousand vehicles are humanoid.

Robots will join Toyota’s assembly lines at one for every two workers: 400,000 machines planned

Starting in 2028, Toyota will deploy around 400 thousand robots across roughly 60 plants worldwide.

F. Fabulinnews writer

Toyota workers put finger-shaped attachments on their hands and perform a familiar operation. That is how ELEY learns.

In two weeks and 1500 repetitions, the robot learned to fold T-shirts almost without errors. The company showed this on 18 September at a briefing at its European headquarters.

Deployment begins in 2028; only then will it become clear how many of the 400 thousand vehicles are humanoid.