Leapmotor CEO Says Non-Humanoid Robots Will Offer Greater Commercial Value Than Humanoids
During Leapmotor Tech Day 2026, CEO Zhu Jiangming announced that the Chinese EV maker will not prioritize humanoid robots in the near term despite having self-developed bipedal prototypes in testing. He emphasized that non-humanoid form factors, such as wheeled or reconfigurable robots, offer far greater practical commercial value and lower energy consumption. While many automakers and tech companies actively hype humanoid robotics, Leapmotor's pragmatic stance underscores the real-world commercial and operational efficiency hurdles of bipedal locomotion. This reflects a growing strategic divide in the automated robotics sector between theoretical versatility and immediate return on investment. Leapmotor has in-house developed key hardware and software layers for its robotic prototypes, including motors, controllers, batteries, perception algorithms, and compute platforms. However, Zhu pointed out that current humanoid robots are like toddlers in capability, whereas industrial utility requires adult-level maturity that remains years away from clear monetization.
## BACKGROUND
Embodied AI refers to artificial intelligence embedded within physical hardware agents capable of sensing and interacting with their environment. Electric vehicle manufacturers often enter robotics because key technologies—such as battery systems, electric drive motors, computer vision, and compute architectures—overlap significantly between EVs and autonomous robots.