'Bennen' Joins Auto Company as Salesperson, How Far Are Robots from Truly 'Selling Cars'?

August 20, Unitree Technology humanoid robot "Bennen" entered the automotive scenario in the identity of "Silicon-based Car Reviewer", experiencing the new Li Auto L9 Livis. It crawled into the second-row space, lay on the zero-gravity seats, and also used the car's charging interface to "recharge" itself. The next day, this special "car reviewer" changed into a work uniform, received an ID badge, and "joined" Li Auto in the identity of "AI Experience Officer".

"Robots joining auto enterprises" is quite topical, but if we trace the timeline back, we will find that "Bennen" is not the first humanoid robot to enter an auto store.

Since 2024, more and more humanoid robots have begun to enter automotive sales and service scenarios. What is changing, perhaps, is not just that there is a "silicon-based employee" added to the store, but that auto enterprises are trying to answer a new question: What exactly can humanoid robots do in the sales service system?

Starting from an Intern Salesperson

Time back to July 2024.

At a Yongda Auto 4S store in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, Agibot robot "Ezpro A2" started a special "internship". During the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show, Shanghai Observer reported that before unveiling at the auto show, "Ezpro A2" already had nearly 10 months of automotive sales experience; outside the 4S store, it also appeared on the stands of SAIC Roewe, BAIC, Changan, and other brands.

The significance of this attempt lies in the robot facing the real automotive sales scenario more directly for the first time: introducing vehicles, answering consumer questions, and interacting. Compared with standardized testing in the laboratory, the customer flow and questions in real stores are more complex, and thus better test the robot's perception, interaction, and movement capabilities.

February 2025, similar attempts continued to appear.

Magic Atomic humanoid robot "Xiaowei" entered a Deepal Auto store in a mall in Wuxi to serve as a sales guide. On-site video showed that it recruited customers outside the store together with a robot dog, and explained vehicle parameters to consumers. On-site staff referred to it as one of the early humanoid robots to enter the automotive sales scenario for service.

In the same year, the role of auto enterprises began to change.

Chery established Anhui Mojia Zhichuang Robot Technology Co., Ltd. in January 2025, and launched its first humanoid robot "Moyin" in March. Chery officials later revealed that Moyin has already been put into use in a Malaysian automotive 4S store, undertaking tasks such as customer reception, product introduction, sales guidance, and model recommendation.

This means the path for robots to enter auto stores began to change: from robot enterprises actively seeking application scenarios, gradually turning into auto enterprises researching and developing themselves.

By 2026, this exploration further extended to domestic automotive consumption scenarios.

Early August, BYD's first commercial service humanoid robot "Xiaodi" completed its first public real-machine unveiling in Zhengzhou "Di Space". Followed closely, Unitree's "Bennen" and Li Auto's cross-border linkage became the latest case.

Not Just Adding "Fresh Faces"

Currently, humanoid robot applications in auto stores roughly present two different paths.

The earliest appearance was robot enterprises actively "testing the waters". Cases such as "Ezpro A2" and "Xiaowei" mainly undertook scenario verification and capability demonstration, giving robot enterprises the opportunity to interact with real consumers.

What followed was auto enterprises developing themselves. Chery established Mojia Robot and launched "Moyin", indicating that auto enterprises began to incorporate humanoid robots into their own intelligent layout; the appearance of BYD's "Xiaodi" further brought self-developed robots to domestic store scenarios.

It needs to be pointed out that humanoid robots entering auto stores is not just to add a "fresh face" to the showroom.

For robot enterprises, the store is a relatively standardized application environment with real foot traffic. Greetings, model explanations, function demonstrations, guiding consumers and other work, there are many tasks with clear processes and high repeatability, suitable for robots to verify capabilities.

For auto enterprises, humanoid robots also provide new service tools.

But automotive sales is not simply reciting product parameters. Consumers may raise questions that were not preset, or may require comparisons between different car models, or even involve complex content such as prices, finance, and after-sales. Whether robots can truly undertake these work, we cannot only look at the demonstration effect once, but see if they can run continuously in real stores.

How Far Is It from Truly "Selling Cars"

When "silicon-based employees" walk from the stand to the store, from one-off eye-catching marketing to long-term daily work, this cross-border heat wave is fading pure technological romanticism.

XPeng Motors Chairman He Xiaopeng also frankly admitted that humanoid robot R&D difficulty is dozens of times that of cars, "entering the factory to work" is not the optimal solution for China in the short term, currently it is more suitable for scenarios such as sales guidance, display and companionship. This judgment actually defines the boundary for the role of humanoid robots in auto stores: it can be an excellent "Experience Officer", but in the short term it is still difficult to become a qualified "Salesperson".

What truly determines whether this technology can stay in the auto store is not how many onlookings it can cause, but whether it can truly improve service efficiency, improve consumer experience, and finally cross the cost barrier, handing over a quantifiable business report.

From the current perspective, this question has no standard answer. Li Auto has more than 400 retail centers nationwide. If scaled deployment is required, the cost of adding at least one robot per store is a considerable test for terminal operating profits. And the cost inflection point of the industry as a whole has not arrived yet — analysis points out that Q4 2026 may see a small-batch bidding window, but "large-scale procurement still needs ROI model verification".

The story of humanoid robots in auto stores has just begun. Whether it is ultimately a gust of wind or a road depends on whether in the next one or two years, these "silicon-based employees" can turn from highlights on the stand into productivity in the store that can be accounted for clearly.