94Ha Viewpoint
When the Unitree G1 robot first appeared in front of him, 35-year-old Lei Yonglin was a little disappointed.
He spent 319,000 yuan and waited for two months. On February 22, when he got it from the dealer, it lay quietly in a black box, with folded limbs, smooth skin, silver-gray, and cold all over.
After powering on, it seemed to be alive, but it staggered and could only wave, shake hands, squat, turn around and other simple movements, and it had to rely on a remote control to operate. “Without power, it is just an iron lump.” Lei Yonglin told the reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network.
However, his disappointment with the robot was soon replaced by excitement, and traffic and business swarmed in.
It is like a newborn baby
On February 22, Lei Yonglin posted the unboxing test video of G1 on the Internet, attracting tens of millions of traffic.
The traffic came with rental and consultation calls. Some businesses want to rent it to attract traffic, some schools want to rent it for popular science education, and some people just want to rent it for fun, and the demand for cross-provincial rentals has also come.
During this period, he received 20 to 30 rental orders almost every day, but unfortunately he only had one robot. He set the daily rental at 8,000 yuan, but it still couldn’t stop the enthusiasm of the renters. The orders were soon scheduled until March, and some people booked the schedule for April and May. When he went to bed at night, he had to turn his phone to flight mode to avoid being disturbed by customers in the middle of the night.
Many media reporters went to interview him, and the fact that the young man spent more than 300,000 yuan to buy a robot and earned 8,000 yuan a day immediately became a hot topic. This car rental company, which is struggling to transform, did not expect that he had accidentally stepped on the hot spot of society.
The G1 he bought came from Yushu Technology, a private enterprise in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, which has been established for only 9 years. Originally, the company focused on making “dogs”, and only turned to making “people” two years ago. Now it has become a world-renowned robot company. In the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, Yushu’s robots went on stage to dance yangko and turn handkerchiefs, and became popular all over the country.
On February 17, Wang Xingxing, the 35-year-old founder of Yushu, attended a private enterprise symposium held in Beijing and spoke as a representative with Ren Zhengfei, Wang Chuanfu, Lei Jun and others. For a time, he and Yushu once again became the focus of public attention and sparked heated discussions.
In Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Yushu’s office building has become a popular check-in point. People from both inside and outside the industry have been visiting and wanting to visit. The customer service phone of the sales robot has been blown up. Wang Xingxing is also very busy. His WeChat signature recently noted: “WeChat is full & it’s better to find my colleagues than to find me. I’m too busy to reply to messages.”
Many people are eager to have a connection with Yushu, Wang Xingxing, and Yushu robots, even if it’s just to take a look, touch, or take a photo. On the Internet, some people posted photos of visiting Yushu, some dug up chat records with Wang Xingxing, some sent emails about cooperation with Yushu, and some suddenly remembered that they had added Wang Xingxing’s WeChat 10 years ago and regretted missing the investment opportunity that year.
For ordinary people, the robots and robot dogs of Yushu are the ones they are most likely to come into contact with. Therefore, those robots that were not popular originally became popular thanks to Yushu.
Before this wave of robot craze came, the young man Lei Yonglin noticed Yushu’s robots. He has loved watching mecha animation since he was a child and dreamed of owning a robot. After weighing the pros and cons, he spent 319,000 yuan in December last year to order a G1 that can be redeveloped.
G1 is Yushu’s second humanoid robot, which can complete actions such as cracking walnuts, opening bottle caps, and jogging at 2 meters per second. “At that time, I mainly wanted to buy it for my own fun.” Lei Yonglin told reporters that he thought about using it for leasing, but he didn’t expect that the demand for leasing was so strong.
Lei Yonglin calculated that if the daily rental is calculated at 8,000 yuan, the cost of buying the robot can be earned back as long as it is rented for 40 days. Some leasing companies have raised the daily rental of G1 to 18,000 yuan. He regretted buying only one, but it was too late to regret. G1 has been sold out in online channels. He plans to restock offline, but he will have to wait one or two months to get the goods.
In the second-hand market, G1 is sold at a price increase of 30,000 to 50,000 yuan. In foreign countries, some companies have sold G1 at a price increase. In January, an American Internet celebrity spent $68,000 (equivalent to about 500,000 yuan) to buy G1. The live video of the unboxing test earned him millions of traffic and more than 100,000 fans.
Many information from home and abroad are proving that a “top stream” in the robot world is being born.
Another market also responded strongly to Yushu Robot – the stock market. The stock price of Changsheng Bearing, the supplier of joint bearings for Yushu Robot, once rose by more than 400%, and the stock prices of many suppliers have reached the daily limit.
However, when Goldman Sachs Group investigated Yushu and stated in a research report that Yushu’s hardware performance was stable, but the turning point of humanoid robot technology was still unclear, and there was still a long way to go before it could really “go to work”, the relevant stocks fell sharply again.
In reality, many people have discovered that the Yushu robot is mainly controlled by a remote control, but in the official videos released by Yushu, viewers rarely see the existence of the remote control.
After Lei Yonglin tried it out, he also found that the G1 was somewhat different from his expectations. When he took it out of the box, it was like supporting a drunk person, “its 70 kilograms is much heavier than a person’s 70 kilograms.” It can’t do many actions, and it can’t have a voice conversation, like a mute. Its footsteps are also very loud, so Lei Yonglin is worried that the neighbors downstairs will complain.
“It feels a bit clumsy.” Lei Yonglin said, so he named the first robot in his life “Benben” and regarded it as an “electronic family member”. “It is also like a newborn baby, which is probably equivalent to a two-year-old human being now, and can just walk.”
Some people laughed at him, saying that he bought a “big injustice” of an iron lump and paid the “IQ tax”; some people said that it was a “large toy with a remote control”; others asked “Can it go up the mountain to chop trees?” “Can it help take care of the baby?” The answer was no. In the conversation, many people showed their disdain for this newly emerging humanoid robot, but they were full of expectations for the entry of “embodied intelligence” into society.
Of course, there was also a faint fear. Some people used punches and kicks to test the balance of G1. Sometimes G1 swayed to regain its balance, but a sudden push or kick would still knock it down. A netizen half-jokingly said: “Many years later, robots will stand in court and take out this video to accuse humans of oppressing and controlling their ancestors.”
Robots’ working life
In fact, before “Benben” made money for Lei Yonglin, its robot “compatriots” had been working for humans for 5 months.
On August 21, 2024, at the 2024 World Robot Conference, G1 made its first offline public appearance in Yizhuang, Beijing. More than a month later, a customer took a screenshot of G1’s video and asked Feng Rongrong, who was engaged in laser equipment leasing, “Can you find this kind of robot that can interact on the spot?”
At that time, robots of other brands were already used for leasing, or to greet guests at the door, or to dance on stage, but G1 had not yet learned to dance and kung fu.
33-year-old Feng Rongrong had never seen this guy who looked a bit like a human. He only had a high school education and had never paid attention to robots, but his keen business sense made him realize that if there were customers asking, there would be business to do. In mid-October, the company bought a G1, and there were not many renters at first.
“The rent at that time was 8,000 yuan.” Feng Rongrong remembers that by the end of 2024, the daily rent will be raised to 9,000 yuan. After the Yushu robot appeared on the Spring Festival Gala, the daily rent will be raised to 12,000 yuan, and the price will rise to 18,000 yuan in mid-February.
The popularity of Yushu robots remains high, and Feng Rongrong’s G1 schedule is tight. He receives 50 to 60 rental calls almost every day, and the robot’s schedule has been scheduled until April. Sometimes he will encounter customers who take the initiative to raise the price, “I will give you 20,000 yuan (daily rent), you help me turn down (other customers).”
In mid-February, Yushu released a video of G1 dancing, with smooth and smooth dance steps, which attracted attention again. Some people lamented, “(The robot) has become a spirit.” On some short video platforms, the video was even marked as “suspected AI generation.” After that, lessors have received consultation calls asking if G1 can dance?
“The current generation I have cannot achieve this effect.” Feng Rongrong told reporters, “Now it can only say hello, which is not very ideal. It lacks a lot of (functions).” In fact, dancing is a function that Yushu has just developed. “It has not been pushed to customers yet.” Yushu responded in a public release.
“At present, it can only provide some emotional value.” Lei Yonglin said that a dancing robot would have a better drainage effect. But he knows that “Benben” can upgrade the system, can be redeveloped, and will continue to evolve, but it takes time.
Even so, this somewhat clumsy guy is still a star-like presence in many places such as the streets, shopping malls, and live broadcast rooms.
Those who sell wine, open businesses, engage in cultural tourism, run trade fairs, and do live broadcasts are all inviting G1 to the scene. No matter where it appears, it will attract onlookers, sometimes arousing exclamations, and sometimes causing short-term traffic jams on the streets. Even if it just raised its arm to say hello to humans, some viewers were so happy that they couldn’t close their mouths.
This is the first large-scale contact between ordinary people and robots in history. Many people are eager to experience the first handshake, conversation, and photo with a robot.
