At the Japan Mobility Show on 26 October 2026, Toyota unveiled the ELEY, a humanoid robot designed to work alongside humans on factory floors. The headline number from Toyota's announcement: up to 400,000 units by 2028. Honda was also present, showing updated assembly and inspection robots that push further into tasks traditionally handled by collaborative robot arms.
The automation industry responds to announcements like this in two ways. Enthusiasts declare the end of the traditional cobot era. Sceptics note that a production target is not a shipped product. Both responses miss the more useful question: what does this mean for UK buyers looking at the used cobot market right now, and should they act before prices shift?
> Quick Answer: Will Toyota's humanoid robots make used cobots cheaper in the UK? > Not in the near term. Toyota ELEY is a 2028 production target, not a 2026 product available to UK buyers. Used cobots, particularly the UR5e and UR10e, are priced at 40 to 55 percent below new today, deliver proven reliability, and have an established UK integrator network. Humanoids will create gradual price pressure on the used cobot market over a three to five year horizon, but a sudden price collapse is unlikely. Buyers with a defined application should act in 2026 rather than wait on speculative disruption.
Toyota ELEY and Honda: What Was Announced at Japan Mobility Show 2026
Toyota's ELEY presentation made two things clear. First, the robot is designed explicitly for factory deployment alongside human workers, not as a research prototype or a demonstration of future capability. It is targeted at real manufacturing tasks including parts handling, component inspection, and sub-assembly work that currently requires human dexterity or flexibility.
Second, the 400,000-unit target by 2028 positions ELEY as a volume product rather than a premium platform. Toyota's manufacturing expertise and supply chain depth make that target more credible than a similar claim from a startup. The company builds tens of millions of vehicles annually; scaling a hardware production line is not a novel challenge for them.
Honda's contribution at the same show was less headline-grabbing but arguably more immediately relevant to factory buyers. Honda demonstrated updated assembly and inspection robots with improved vision systems and force-controlled assembly capability, addressing specific gaps in current cobot performance for complex insertion tasks.
Neither announcement produces a robot you can buy and deploy in a UK factory today. But both signal that the major automotive manufacturers, with their enormous production-engineering resources, are treating humanoid and near-humanoid factory robots as a near-term commercial reality rather than a distant aspiration.
The 400,000-Unit Target: Realistic or Marketing
Toyota's 400,000-unit figure deserves scrutiny. Context matters here. As of mid-2026, the entire global humanoid robot market had shipped somewhere between 19,000 and 22,000 units, with Chinese manufacturers holding the overwhelming majority of volume. Toyota is proposing to produce more than 18 times the current total global market, in two years.
That is aggressive. It requires not only manufacturing scale but also a buyer base large enough to absorb that volume, which in turn requires that humanoid robots reach a price point and reliability threshold that justifies widespread factory adoption.
Toyota's credibility in large-scale manufacturing is genuine. The company has more experience ramping hardware production at scale than any humanoid startup. But ramping a complex electromechanical robot with precision joints, advanced compute, and safety certification is structurally harder than ramping a vehicle assembly line.
The realistic read is this: 400,000 units is an aspirational ceiling that signals intent and investment commitment, not a firm delivery schedule. Even a fraction of that target, say 50,000 to 100,000 units reaching the market by the end of 2028, would represent a significant shift in the supply-demand dynamics of factory automation.
How Humanoids and Cobots Compare for Factory Tasks
Humanoid robots and cobots are not direct substitutes. They solve different problems.
Cobots are optimised for defined, repeatable tasks in semi-structured environments. A UR10e performing machine tending executes the same door-open, part-load, part-unload cycle thousands of times per shift with sub-millimetre repeatability. It does not need to see or adapt to a changing environment. It needs to be fast, reliable, and easy to reprogram when the production run changes.
Humanoid robots are designed for unstructured environments where the task varies, the workspace cannot be precisely configured, or the robot needs to navigate between workstations. Their value proposition is flexibility across multiple task types rather than high-speed repeatability on a single task.
In practice, this means the tasks where humanoids are most competitive are tasks that are currently difficult to automate at all, not tasks where cobots already work well. Toyota ELEY's target applications, parts handling across varied configurations, complex assembly steps requiring human-like dexterity, are in this category. A UR5e performing consistent pick-and-place in a structured cell is not in this category.
The two technologies will coexist, likely targeting different cost-benefit profiles, rather than one immediately replacing the other.
The Cobot Market Today: Why Traditional Arms Still Dominate
Collaborative robots have been commercially available since Universal Robots shipped the original UR5 in 2008. In the eighteen years since, they have built the infrastructure that makes them reliable choices: global integrator networks, mature software ecosystems, established safety certifications, and deep bodies of case study evidence across every major manufacturing sector.
In the UK specifically, the used cobot market is healthy and growing. Universal Robots UR5e and UR10e units are the most liquid assets in the used industrial robot market, with dozens available at any given time through refurbishers, auctions, and direct business disposals. FANUC CRX units are an expanding presence. The integrator network for UR programming, gripper specification, and cell design is well established.
Humanoid robots lack all of this supporting infrastructure in the UK today. There is no equivalent to the UK PolyScope integrator community for humanoid platforms. There are no safety certifications that have been tested against UK factory requirements at scale. There is no used market to speak of.
For a UK manufacturer looking to deploy automation in the next twelve months, the cobot remains the only practical choice.
Historical Analogy: What Happened to Used Lathe Prices When CNC Arrived
The closest historical parallel to the current cobot-versus-humanoid question is the transition from manual machine tools to CNC machining centres in the 1970s and 1980s. CNC was demonstrably superior for repeatability, throughput, and complex geometries. It was also expensive, required new skills, and lacked the setup simplicity of a manual lathe for one-off work.
What happened to used manual lathe prices? They did not collapse. They declined gradually over roughly a decade as CNC adoption grew, and they retained value in niche applications where their flexibility and low cost of use remained competitive. Small job shops continued buying used manual lathes well into the 1990s, long after CNC had become dominant in high-volume production.
The lesson for the cobot market is that technology transitions in manufacturing are slow. The installed base of cobots, the integrator expertise built around them, and the proven reliability of platforms like the UR series create significant inertia. Used cobot prices are more likely to face gradual downward pressure over three to five years than to crash on the back of a humanoid production announcement.
UK Used Cobot Prices Right Now
As of October 2026, used cobot prices on the UK market reflect a maturing secondhand supply rather than a market in distress. Key data points from current listings:
| Model | Used Price Range (UK) | vs New |
|---|---|---|
| Universal Robots UR5e | £12,000 to £17,000 | 39 to 57% below new |
| Universal Robots UR10e | £15,000 to £22,000 | 37 to 57% below new |
| FANUC CRX-5iA | £14,000 to £20,000 | 29 to 50% below new |
| FANUC CRX-10iA | £17,000 to £25,000 | 29 to 51% below new |
| Universal Robots UR5 (CB3) | £6,000 to £10,000 | discontinued model |
| Universal Robots UR10 (CB3) | £8,000 to £14,000 | discontinued model |
CB3 generation UR units (the pre-e-Series models) have already seen significant price compression over the past two years as e-Series supply increased. This represents natural generational depreciation, not humanoid disruption.
E-Series units (UR5e, UR10e) have held value well because demand from UK SMEs and integrators remains strong. Supply is growing but is absorbed by a widening buyer base. Browse current listings on Robot AutoTrader for live pricing.
The Case for Buying Used Cobots in 2026 Before Disruption
The argument for buying now rests on three pillars.
First, the automation ROI clock starts when you deploy, not when you decide to deploy. A used UR10e at £18,000 deployed in a machine tending application can realistically pay back its capital in twelve to eighteen months at current UK labour rates. Every month spent waiting on a speculative market shift is a month of foregone payback.
Second, if humanoid competition does eventually compress used cobot prices, units purchased at today's prices and run through their useful life still generate positive returns. The relevant question is not whether the asset will hold its value in perpetuity, but whether the return on the automation investment justifies the purchase price.
Third, the risk of waiting is real. If Toyota and Honda's announcements accelerate enterprise interest in factory automation generally, demand for cobots may actually increase before humanoids become viable alternatives. Automation interest has historically lifted all boats in the used robot market.
Review the used cobot price guide and the robot depreciation guide for detailed data on how used cobot values have moved over the past three years.
The Case for Waiting: What Humanoid Robots Cannot Do Yet
The sceptical case for waiting has merit, particularly for buyers who are not yet committed to a specific application.
Humanoid robots cannot yet match cobots on repeatability for defined tasks. The sub-millimetre precision that a UR5e delivers routinely in a structured assembly cell is beyond current humanoid capability at production speed. If your application requires tight tolerance work in a repeatable cycle, a humanoid will not substitute for a cobot in the foreseeable future.
Humanoid robots also lack the UK integrator ecosystem. Deploying a cobot today means accessing a mature network of experienced integrators, gripper suppliers, vision system specialists, and PolyScope programmers. Deploying a hypothetical Toyota ELEY in 2028 means working with a nascent ecosystem where best practices are still being established and mistakes are expensive.
For buyers who are still in the business case stage and have flexibility on timing, monitoring the humanoid market through 2027 before committing is reasonable. For buyers with a specific, well-defined application and a factory floor ready to receive automation, the used cobot is the better choice today.
Browse the best value used robots guide and the used humanoid robot price guide to compare the current options across both categories.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Toyota ELEY? Toyota ELEY is a humanoid robot designed for factory floor deployment alongside human workers, unveiled at the Japan Mobility Show on 26 October 2026. Toyota has set an ambition to produce up to 400,000 units by 2028.
When will humanoid robots replace cobots? Full replacement is not expected within three to five years. Cobots and humanoids target different task profiles. Cobots excel at defined, repeatable cycles. Humanoids are designed for flexible, unstructured work. Both will coexist in most factory environments.
Are cobots still worth buying in the UK in 2026? Yes. Used cobots are at strong value, humanoid alternatives are not yet commercially available in the UK, and the cobot integrator ecosystem is mature. Buyers with a defined application should act now rather than wait.
What is the best used cobot to buy in the UK in 2026? A used UR5e (£12,000 to £17,000) or UR10e (£15,000 to £22,000) for most applications. FANUC CRX-10iA (£17,000 to £25,000) for buyers who value FANUC's industrial support network.
How does a used UR5e compare to a humanoid for assembly? A used UR5e is faster, more repeatable, and cheaper for defined assembly tasks than any commercially available humanoid today. It achieves repeatability of plus or minus 0.03 mm. Humanoids are not competitive for high-speed repeatable cycles in 2026.
Will humanoid robots make used cobots cheaper? Gradual downward pressure over three to five years is likely, but a sudden price crash is not. The installed base, integrator ecosystem, and ongoing demand for cobots create significant price inertia.
What happened to industrial robot prices when cobots arrived? They did not collapse. Traditional industrial robots retained value for high-payload and high-speed applications where cobots cannot substitute. The market bifurcated rather than collapsed.
Is now a good time to buy a used cobot in the UK? Yes, for buyers with a defined application. Supply of quality units is healthy, prices are strong, and every month of delay is a month of foregone automation payback. The Robot AutoTrader browse page lists current UK used cobot inventory.