(Yicai) June 1 -- More and more Chinese suppliers of automotive parts are undergoing business transformations toward robotics engineering, given the auto industry’s increasing competition and declining profit margins.

Nantong Chaoda Equipment is fully committed to developing intelligent robots as a secondary business in terms of financial and human resources, said Chen Cunyou, chairman of the Chinese maker of auto interior and exterior molds, recently told investors.

Last year, 60 percent of Chaoda’s revenue came from the mold business, but the new energy battery box and intelligent agricultural protection robot businesses also emerged as great contributors to the company’s growth, Chen noted.

Chaoda’s smart agricultural protection robots are used on cotton fields in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, leveraging artificial intelligence visual recognition, centimeter-level high-precision navigation, and variable application technology. They can cover 53.3 to 66.6 hectares a day, which is five to eight times more than traditional manual methods.

Shuanglin Auto Parts and Xinquan Automotive Trim also plan to develop robots as a second growth curve, the two suppliers recently announced.

The transformation of the auto industry will have two phases, said Wang Jianfeng, chairman of Joyson Electronic, a leading Chinese provider of smart vehicle technology solutions. The first phase is electrification, and the second one revolves around intelligence and robotics, he noted.

Parts suppliers have two main advantages when venturing into the humanoid robot business, said Wang Feili, industrial analyst at UBS Securities China. They have extensive experience in both supply chain integration and hardware and software technology synergy.

The market potential for robots is huge. In its Robot Almanac published last December, Morgan Stanley predicted that global robot hardware sales will increase from about USD100 billion in 2025 to USD500 billion by 2030, USD9 trillion by 2040, and USD25 trillion by 2050.

Core components in the humanoid robot industry chain account for about 60 percent to 70 percent of the total cost, according to a research report by Shanghai Pudong Development Bank International Securities.

Editor: Futura Costaglione