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BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng sees humanoid robots as a long-term project and is considering large investments that could go up to 100 billion yuan ($13.80 billion), state media reported its CEO as saying on Monday.
CEO He Xiaopeng said on the sidelines of the annual parliamentary session that while the company's current investment could be considered conservative given how it was in the early stages of entering the sector, it was ready to invest much more, the Securities Times reported.
"Xpeng has been working in the humanoid robot industry for five years, may continue to be in the business for another 20 years, invest additional 50 billion yuan and even 100 billion yuan," He said, without disclosing the company's current investment.
The Guangzhou-based EV maker entered the humanoid robot industry in 2020 and unveiled its humanoid Iron in November to rival Tesla Bot.
Xpeng is among an increasing number of automakers betting on humanoids, which Chinese policymakers have signalled as an area they want to see tech breakthroughs in.
Stellantis-backed Leapmotor has set up a robot team of dozens of people, which is currently in the pre-research stage, CEO Zhu Jiangming told reporters on Tuesday. The products are aimed at adoption in industrial scenarios such as Leapmotor factory assemblies where robots can replace human to improve work efficiency.
Automakers could invest 1-2 billion yuan per year in applicable scenarios to deploy humanoid robots, according to He, the Economic View report on Tuesday.
($1 = 7.2480 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Qiaoyi Li and Brenda Goh; Editing by Michael Perry)