North American auto companies buying more robots to keep up with demand
The Hindu
Companies ordered 9,098 robots in the first quarter, a 19.6% increase over a year ago, according to the Association for Advancing Automation, an industry group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The orders were valued at over $466 million in total.
(Subscribe to our Today's Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click to subscribe for free.) North American companies boosted spending on industrial robots in the first quarter as they scrambled to keep up with surging demand in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies ordered 9,098 robots in the first quarter, a 19.6% increase over a year ago, according to the Association for Advancing Automation, an industry group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The orders were valued at over $466 million in total.![](/newspic/picid-1269750-20250211011510.jpg)
The Union Budget unveiled on February 1, 2025, has come at a time of unprecedented global uncertainty and a flagging domestic economy. The real GDP growth is estimated at 6.4% for 2024-25 and between 6.3-6.8% for 2025-26, a far cry from >8 percent growth required annually to make India a developed nation by 2047. While much attention has been devoted to the demand stimulus through income tax cuts, not enough is said about the proposed reforms in urban development, tariff rationalisation, and regulatory simplification aimed at making Indian cities and corporates more competitive. Since the majority of economic activity is located in cities (urban areas account for ~55% of GDP) and produced by large corporates (~40% of the national output and 55% of India’s exports), the above-mentioned reforms have a pivotal role in improving India’s trend growth rate. Below we unpack each reform.