I remember him mentioning the project in his robotics class, found it: https://youtu.be/xWPViQ6LI-Q?t=4075 he claims it will be around $5,000
Maybe of interest
It seems to me that if mass produced, they should at lesat cost less than entry-level cars, since they are a similar size/weight and simpler, so less than 15k.
And it also feels like they should cost a similar amount to premium versions of appliances like dishwashers/washing machines/etc., so in the 1-5k range.
When you hire a person, you have to pay them continuously for their work. Once you pay for a robot, you don't owe it a salary.
There's obviously other factors - ongoing costs to keep robots going, but also robots never call in sick and can sometimes work faster or more precisely than a numan.
There are times the math works out for the robot but it's not very often. Keep in mind the robots need to be managed - someone has to make sure they're working and be able to take over when they go down.
Industrial automation is only getting cheaper, more capable, and easier to use with every passing year. Things you "know" from even a couple years ago don't apply today. The rate of progress is pretty incredible.
I know those aren't robots walking around the floor - but that level of automation to load/unload parts is a huge thing to "keep the CNC machines fed" in more and more factories.
Look up Fanuc robots on youtube for tons of examples of automation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKrlXyLQbwM is a cool example of 2 robots on a rail servicing 4 CNC machines. What's neat here is that it's taking parts from machine to machine to work through all manufacturing steps.
None of this is exactly that "high end", either. Plenty of high end hobbyists/micro-businesses run Robodrills (like the last video) in their home garage. The UR robot in the first video I linked is super accessible as well and showing up in more and more small (<10 employee) machine shops.
And, as a sibling comment points out, you have to pay for maintenance and operating costs. The capital price of robots is kind of irrelevant, what's the annualised TCO?
We actually get to see a small model of this on farms. Once upon a time every farm had dozens or even hundreds of workers. Whether planting and harvesting corn or milking cows, it was all done by hand, and it took a lot of people working in close proximity. Today's farmer has a lot of automation, which means far fewer people. One person in a harvester can harvest a field of wheat, maybe a truck drives out to them once in a while, exchanges hand signals, nobody's close enough to get infected. A couple of people can handle milking a herd of cows, they touch the cows but no need to get close to each other. No problem keeping appropriate distances.
Not every farm is like that, it's going to be a problem for fruit harvesting for example where you'd usually bring in a lot of temporary workers once a year. But these systems don't have to change everything. If there are six factories in your city, and three of them remain unchanged but the other three just become a bunch of robots, with the only human on site one mechanic and a security guard that's an enormous change.