Recently, at EVE Energy's headquarters and the Jinyuan Robotics AI Center, EVE Energy Chairman Liu Jincheng stated, "Now is the era of AI, not the era of manufacturing. The era of manufacturing is 'over'."

His assessment was even more direct: 40% of the increase in US stock market capitalization comes from AI companies; the truly valuable part is not manufacturing, nor sales revenue, but creation.

The trend is indeed changing. Leading robotics and AI companies such as Unitree Robotics, Calcium Resources, Galaxy General Robotics, and Independent Variable Robotics have absorbed almost all the hot money in the market. Various industries are being reshaped by AI and are all crowding into the robotics wave, either developing applications or building supply chains.

Against this backdrop, EVE Energy's development of robots is not surprising, and it's hard to say it's simply jumping on the bandwagon. It is understood that its first robot product is expected to be released in 2026, and the company is already planning to export its robot products overseas.

However, unlike companies that "sell robots," EVE Energy seems to be treating robots as part of its production system.

EVE Energy envisions two key aspects: first, using AI to drive the intelligent upgrade of lithium battery manufacturing; and second, using real-world scenarios and data from its large-scale factories to accelerate the iteration of AI products.

Ultimately, this is still a battery manufacturing company. While companies like Unitree Robotics aim to commercialize robots, EVE Energy aims to upgrade its factories with robots to produce better batteries.

This differs from the currently popular robotics companies.

>> Using Robots to Make Batteries

Typically, robot products are often "technology-first": algorithms and engineering capabilities are used to create the product first, and then the market is searched for scenarios that can accommodate it.

But EVE Energy takes a different approach—first the scenario, then the product. Its robots are more like a "demand-driven" result: starting from the real pain points of its own production lines, it develops robots as part of the production system.

In fact, in typical industrial scenarios, automated equipment such as robotic arms are already highly prevalent, covering a large number of main process handling, assembly, and processing stages.

However, these production robots primarily address repetitive labor, precision, and efficiency issues, while the potential for robots to truly integrate into manufacturing production lines remains largely untapped.

This is especially true in the battery industry, which possesses traditional manufacturing attributes. The stronger these manufacturing attributes, the greater the demand for robots. This trend is even more pronounced in the Chinese market, where the need for robot deployment is more urgent.

According to data from the International Federation of Robotics, in 2022, China installed over 290,000 industrial robots, six times that of Japan, seven times that of the United States, twelve times that of Germany, and forty times that of France. In 2023, China alone accounted for more than half of the world's new industrial robots.

But EVE Energy's current endeavor is not a simple upgrade of robotic arms; it's about developing intelligent robots for production line collaboration: integrating AI large-scale model capabilities to connect processes and workflows at a higher level, undertaking more complex tasks.

The entity undertaking this research and development is Jinyuan Robotics, officially known as Huizhou Jinyuan Precision Automation Equipment Co., Ltd. (formerly Jinyuan Automation), a wholly-owned subsidiary of EVE Energy.

In the past, Jinyuan Robotics has been a key equipment supplier for EVE Energy, designing and developing most of the self-developed equipment at EVE's various bases.

Xiao Gang, director of Jinyuan's Robotics Research Institute, believes that EVE Energy has hundreds of production lines, and Jinyuan's understanding of process details and industrial environments can feed back into AI models, making them more closely aligned with the needs of real-world jobs. This is the most fundamental difference between Jinyuan and many other robotics companies that simply "go from the lab to the factory."

Their approach is to start with the usage scenario, defining the robot's function based on the tasks within that scenario, and designing the robot's form according to the job.

"First, the task and scenario determine what the robot needs to look like, and then we match it with the corresponding technical solutions."

Therefore, Xiao Gang explains that EVE Energy's current robots cover bipedal, wheeled, and heavy-duty types, with approximately seven series to adapt to the differentiated needs of different scenarios.

These robots will primarily replace jobs that humans cannot perform, cannot perform stably, or that are extremely costly to perform long-term. Examples include heavy-load handling, high-temperature and dusty environments, and high-speed inspection processes.

The advantage of machines lies here—they don't get tired, aren't affected by emotions, pose no health or workplace injury risks, and can reliably complete fixed tasks according to a program.

Of course, the significance of introducing robots into production lines goes beyond simply replacing humans.

EVE Energy envisions that when AI robots are deployed on a large scale across the entire production line, their organizational capabilities have the potential to permeate the entire production process at the process level: not only optimizing efficiency at individual points, but also potentially disrupting existing production line layouts and discovering better factory production organization models.

Take the flexible manufacturing currently pursued in the battery industry as an example. Companies are striving for rapid production line transformation to adapt to the product needs of different customers, different models, and even different material systems.

With the mass application of AI robots, production lines are expected to achieve greater flexibility at higher speeds, serving faster iterations and more customized order structures.

Furthermore, robots can potentially restructure production lines and processes themselves: leveraging greater freedom and more flexible organization, they can significantly shorten production line lengths, produce more products in the same area, and maximize capacity utilization.

In other words, EVE Energy's robotics business differs from most Chinese robotics companies; its goal is singular and pragmatic: to use robots to create smarter factories and better batteries.