The cool performance of the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Horse in Bingwu has made humanoid robots a topic of great interest among the people. It is worth noting that this field is becoming the focus of forward-looking strategic layout for automotive companies. According to incomplete statistics, as of now, there are nearly 20 mainstream global car companies that have entered the humanoid robot race through self-developed, investment and investment, and cooperation methods. Why are car companies flocking to humanoid robots? Firstly, there is the urgency of strategic breakthrough. Although the automotive industry has seized the opportunity of electrification and intelligent transformation, giving birth to the strategic emerging industry of intelligent connected new energy vehicles in the past 10 years, and has been unparalleled in market growth rate, industry chain extension, and capital market heat, the dilemma of "incremental income growth without profit growth" caused by "internal competition" has forced more and more car companies to explore the second growth curve. The humanoid robot industry, predicted by numerous investment banks to create a market value of $10 trillion in the future, has become a new choice for car companies. Secondly, there is a technological homology between intelligent cars and humanoid robots. As the embodiment of "embodied intelligence" in different forms, autonomous vehicle can be regarded as "wheeled robots". There are a large number of shareable technical modules and supply chain resources between algorithms, computing power platforms, perception hardware, large models, and training data. The mobility of humanoid robots also heavily utilizes the core "three electric" technology of electric vehicles. Precision manufacturing and automation production line technology, quality control and reliability verification systems, large-scale customization and flexible production capabilities in the automotive industry can all help humanoid robots quickly transition to mass production and significantly reduce costs. No wonder Xiaopeng Motors founder He Xiaopeng admitted that "70% of the technology reserves of car companies can be directly reused on robots". Thirdly, there is endogeneity in the commercialization landing scenario. In recent years, news about the trial training of humanoid robot car companies has been flooding the screen from time to time. Several founders of companies interviewed by the author have stated that the current breakthrough point for the commercialization of humanoid robots is the manufacturing industry production line and commercial guidance. Among them, the automotive industry, which has the highest application density of industrial robots, is the most preferred. This means that the production lines and sales service scenarios within car companies can provide a unique natural testing ground for the first application of their own humanoid robots. Moreover, the high-quality training data generated by the internal scenarios mentioned above can also drive rapid product iteration and form a technical closed loop. The natural "moat" constructed by car companies entering the humanoid robot race, with strong technological homogeneity, high supply chain overlap, endogenous landing scenarios, and closed-loop data collection, is being regarded by the capital market as an imaginative investment "gold mine". Not long ago, Xiaopeng Motors, Hyundai Motors, and Ideal Motors successively released information on the iteration, deployment, and expansion of research and development of humanoid robots. However, while being optimistic about the long-term prospects of commercialization, the emerging car companies still need to have a clear judgment on the technical difficulty and market opportunities of humanoid robots. Let's first look at the technical difficulty. Humanoid robots need to engage in safe, efficient, accurate, and even predictive multimodal interactions with humans in a personified form in three-dimensional space. This means that from showcasing skills based on preset programs on stage to achieving universality and large-scale entry into households, the road ahead for humanoid robots is still long. This not only requires sustained large-scale investment in funds and talents, but also relies on breakthroughs in new technologies such as solid-state batteries and flexible sensors, as well as the next "ChatGPT style leap" achieved by physical AI. Looking at market opportunities again. Currently, robotic arms are capable of handling almost all large-scale production scenarios in the manufacturing industry. The remaining production processes that cannot replace manual labor are either extremely difficult to replace or have very few replaceable workers. If car companies want to open up a new growth curve in the short term, they not only need to explore and reconstruct sustainable demand scenarios outside their own production lines, but also need to find a balance between cost, performance, and substitution efficiency. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, there will be over 140 domestic humanoid robot complete machine enterprises by 2025, indicating the industry's popularity. At this time, entering the market presents both opportunities and challenges. Who can ultimately win depends on their resource endowment, innovative culture, business model, ecological construction, and cross-border integration ability, which further tests the forward-looking vision and strategic determination of car companies. (New Society)