[bluGill]

“Every time you ask for another dollar in wages, a thousand more robots start looking more practical.” -Roger B. Smith (GM CEO in the 1980s).

Factories have been automating for decades. Last factory tour I took they said in 1950 this plant had over 2000 employees working, now (2019) about 200. Then he pointed to the laser cutter which alone replaced 150 workers with just 2. This factory is not considered very automated by modern standards either.

[saturn8601]

Yes I am very familiar with auto automation. They are amazing. Tesla went so overboard that maybe the ROI isn't even there for some processes (installing wheels on a car by industrial robot? They repeated the mistakes GM made in the 70s and 80s with being too early and robots being ripped out and left in the parking lots.

Already products are designed for robotic automation: reduce fasteners, make a single piece do more, make sure a blind one armed dumb person can put the thing together(thats basically the industrial single arm robots you have in factories today).

Still maybe this time is different...but to be fair I put the caveat that you must design the product from the ground up for this new kind of potential automation. (I was talking about the new bipedal vision robots not the old school industrial robot arms) What that looks like? Well the Chinese are probably cooking something up for sure and hopefully somewhere in the US its happening as well.