The automotive industry's next growth opportunity may extend far beyond the car itself.
As embodied AI advances, capabilities developed for intelligent electric vehicles are finding applications in robots and other intelligent machines.
This is not simply diversification. It is the expansion of an entire automotive industrial ecosystem into physical AI.
Tesla is developing Optimus alongside its autonomous-driving ambitions. XPENG is advancing its IRON humanoid robot. Hyundai, which acquired Boston Dynamics in 2021, has long recognized the strategic potential of robotics.
Chery offers a different example. Its AiMOGA robots have entered automotive dealerships, assisting with customer reception, vehicle introductions, and test-drive arrangements. Robots are becoming not only manufacturing tools, but also part of customer-facing commercial operations.
Image source: AiMOGA
What makes this transformation particularly interesting is the automotive industry's multiple roles.
Automakers can become robot manufacturers, customers, application developers, and providers of real-world deployment environments.
But the opportunity extends well beyond automakers.
Horizon Robotics illustrates the potential connection between automotive AI computing and machine intelligence. Its experience in specialized processors, perception algorithms, and software-hardware integration provides capabilities relevant to emerging robotic systems.
Hesai demonstrates another pathway. Having developed automotive lidar technologies, the company now supplies sensing solutions for robotics and is expanding into spatial intelligence and robotic motion components.
Schaeffler brings a different strength: precision engineering and motion technology. It is developing and supplying robotic actuators while also partnering with robotics companies to deploy humanoids across its manufacturing network.
Image source: Schaeffler
Together, these examples reveal a broader industrial opportunity.
Intelligent vehicles and embodied robots share foundations in perception, computing, decision-making, motion control, and system integration.
In fact, an intelligent vehicle can itself be understood as a form of physical AI.
But technological overlap does not mean direct transferability. Robots face different challenges in manipulation, mobility, human interaction, and safety.
The automotive industry nevertheless has an important advantage: established supply chains, industrialization experience, engineering talent, and access to real operating environments.
It can participate across the value chain, from AI computing and sensors to actuators, complete machines, and commercial applications.
Yet the ultimate challenge remains economic.
Impressive demonstrations and ambitious deployment plans are not the same as reliable products, measurable customer value, and sustainable profitability.
The real opportunity is to transform accumulated automotive capabilities into a scalable industrial foundation for physical AI.
The next chapter of automotive transformation may therefore be defined not only by how intelligent cars become, but by how far the technologies and industrial capabilities developed around them can extend into the physical world.
Written by Xiaoying (Tina) Zhou, Producer of C Talk, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Gasgoo
