The days when renting a single robot for a day cost as much as 20,000 yuan ended within a year. Daily rental rates for humanoid robots in China have plunged more than 70%, draining the early-stage bubble from the market.
Daily rental rates for some humanoid robots have fallen below 1,000 yuan (about 200,000 won) this year, according to Sina Finance on the 20th. Robot dogs have dropped to as low as 100 yuan (about 20,000 won). On the secondhand trading platform Xianyu, some sellers are now renting out robots for 200 to 300 yuan (about 40,000 to 60,000 won) a day.
Sellers describe the moves as a way to attract new customers, but the industry views the declines as the result of a chain reaction in prices as robots become more widely available.
Rental Rates Deflate in Just One Year
The mood was the opposite only a year ago. After humanoid robot performances drew attention at last year's Lunar New Year gala show, inquiries poured in from tourist sites, corporate events and university projects, and some operators were fully booked through May.
Unitree's G1, which gained popularity after appearing on the broadcast, rented for 8,000 to 15,000 yuan a day on secondhand platforms, topping 20,000 yuan (about 3.98 million won) during peak season. Now, Unitree's U2 goes for about 3,000 yuan (about 600,000 won) a day and the G1 for about 2,000 yuan (about 400,000 won). Robot dogs cost 164 yuan (about 32,000 won), and long-term rentals bring the daily rate below 100 yuan.
The biggest factor is expanded supply. As major manufacturers including Unitree Robotics sharply increased mass-production capacity, robot prices fell almost every month. In June, Logic Robotics said mass production of commercial humanoid robots had reached 15,000 units. In August, Unitree Robotics announced cumulative output of about 18,000 units. The number of companies involved in robot rentals rose 55.7% in a year, the highest in about a decade.
Platform competition has also made pricing more transparent. Late last year, Zhiyuan Robotics launched Qingtianzhu, an open rental platform, and JD.com followed by opening a self-operated flagship store for robot rentals. How standardized and reliable a service is has become a bigger factor in choosing a platform than which company holds which robots.
Rental rates have tumbled, but the market itself is growing. Research firm iiMedia Research projected that China's robot rental market will exceed 10 billion yuan (about 2 trillion won) by the end of this year, roughly 10 times the about 1 billion yuan (about 200 billion won) recorded last year.
Sina Finance assessed the decline not as a temporary price fluctuation for specific products but as a process of early-market froth being squeezed out. Local experts expect that liability insurance, standardized service and credit systems, rather than low prices, will determine winners and losers in the market.