How Fast Could Robot Production Scale Up?

Factory build times set another hard latency: China can add purpose-built lines in ~6–9 months (Tesla Shanghai 8 months), while Western greenfield projects take 2+ years; Agility RoboFab data imply ~0.09 humanoids/ft2/yr, so a 10M/yr humanoid industry would require ~110M ft2 and tens of thousands of workers. Applying historical shock multipliers (1.4–2.2x) to current trends yields aggressive but plausible scale-ups: by EOY 2030 a shock hitting end-2027 could produce 1.5–3M humanoids/yr (5–10M plausible with strong reducer/factory response), 2–5M quadrupeds/yr (8–15M central), and 100–200M drones/yr (300–500M ambitious). The authors note recursive dynamics—robots building robots—would compress timelines later, but their near-term projections focus on human-run expansion and component/factory constraints.