A Car Company Is Taking Pre-Orders for a Home Robot

On October 21, 2026, a carmaker's robotics arm will do something Tesla still won't: take your money for a humanoid robot. AiMOGA Robotics, the robotics brand of China's Chery Group, will unveil Mobo — its first consumer-grade family companion Home Robot — at the Chery International User Summit in Wuhu, and open global pre-orders the same day, the company announced.

It is the most aggressive move yet in the race to put humanoid robots in living rooms. Where rivals have kept their machines in factories and labs, AiMOGA is betting that families are ready to buy one now — and that a company known for building cars knows how to manufacture one.

What Mobo is supposed to do

Mobo is designed around family life rather than factory floors. The robot carries voice interaction, visual object recognition, schedule reminders and long-term memory, which AiMOGA says lets it discuss objects nearby, remind users of planned activities and follow up on earlier conversations for more natural, continuous interaction at home.

The brains of the operation is AiMOGA's self-developed MoAgent system, which connects perception, interaction and execution. Instead of answering one command at a time like a smart speaker with legs, the robot is meant to break complex instructions into steps and plan longer tasks on its own — turning a simple request into goal-driven help around the house. The machine moves with twenty-two degrees of freedom for gestures and movement, according to the company's announcement materials.

This is not Mobo's first public outing. The robot previously appeared at the World Robot Conference and the World Manufacturing Convention, where it drew crowds as a demo of companionship and educational support for households. The company frames its pitch across generations: communication, companionship and daily routines for everyone from kids to grandparents.

Why a car company is building your roommate

AiMOGA's edge, if it has one, is Chery's industrial muscle. The company says it has built thirty-one in-house research laboratories covering motion control and intelligent perception, and it is porting technology from intelligent car cockpits and assisted driving into robotic movement and decision-making. Chery's supply chain and manufacturing scale — the unglamorous machinery that ships millions of vehicles — is supposed to do what startups cannot: build robots by the thousand and keep costs down.

The track record in commercial settings is already measurable. AiMOGA says its broader robotics portfolio is operating in more than one hundred use cases, with cumulative deliveries topping three thousand units across more than sixty countries and regions — from sales reception to smart traffic management to medical guidance. The home is the next frontier, and the summit where Mobo debuts, running October 18 through October 23, 2026 under the theme "The Pulse Lives on," is the company's coming-out party for the idea.

The timing is pointed. Tesla's Optimus, the most famous humanoid in development, is still not for sale to the public: Elon Musk has said it could reach buyers by the end of 2027, though analysts widely expect 2028 or 2029 to be more realistic, and Tesla has never opened reservations. Musk's long-run price target sits at twenty to thirty thousand dollars at massive production scale — but targets are not price tags. AiMOGA opening pre-orders this week, by contrast, is a genuine first-mover claim in the consumer humanoid race — the boldest Home Robot bet anyone has made so far.

There are reasons to keep the confetti in the box. AiMOGA disclosed no pricing, no deposit terms and no delivery timeline for Mobo, as the AI Insider noted in its coverage of the announcement — three details that tend to matter when a company asks for your money. And the hardest problems in home robotics have nothing to do with trade shows. An independent robotics tracker recently noted that regulation alone will keep first-generation humanoids away from unsupervised childcare, elder care or cooking for years, and that a real kitchen — with a dog, a toddler and a floor full of clutter — is a far tougher test than a staged demo. A pre-order page is easy; a robot you trust alone with your grandmother is not.

For Gen Z, the arrival of a home humanoid lands differently than it does for gadget collectors. This is the generation most likely to live far from aging parents, most comfortable treating AI as company, and most skeptical of big promises from big companies. A companion robot that remembers your schedule, notices what is in the room and plans its own tasks sounds like science fiction until the pre-order button goes live — and then the questions get very practical, very fast. What happens when it misunderstands an instruction? Who is liable when it breaks something? And how much of "family companion" is companionship, versus a very expensive way to feel less alone?

The answers start arriving when Mobo takes the stage in Wuhu. Whether the first consumer humanoid from a carmaker becomes an appliance like the microwave or a cautionary tale like the 3D television will depend on the details AiMOGA has not shared yet — starting with the price. Until then, the boldest claim in robotics this year belongs to a company most people outside China have never heard of, from an industry nobody expected to build their next roommate.

Related reading: the race to put AI on your body is already on with a Google co-designed edge AI chip headed for wrists, and researchers recently watched AI copies marooned on a virtual island start to play on their own.