Cars, on the other hand, remain expensive. A robot with sufficient versatility to cook, clean and walk the dog is significantly more mechanically complex than a car and likely exposes manufacturers to similar liability issues.

And if the hardware costs mean it's not a mass market product, the software licences aren't going to be cheap either.

I doubt the price of cars is driven in big part by actual costs. Also, at least in my area, you can buy good enough used cars for as little as $400, which isn't very much money. A lot of people drive in cars that cost less than a decent PC.

Cars cost more than $400 to build. The used market does not pay for the existence of things.

Cellphones have no moving parts and do not exert large forces on things. High quality high power motors are expensive and will always be expensive compared to the consumer electronics we are used to.

Roomba etc can be cheap because the forces are small and required accuracy is low. An arm that can e.g. load a dishwasher or plug itself into an electrical socket is another beast. Consider that to lift 1kg payload the arm also has to lift itself, and arms typically weigh several kilograms.

Mass producing robots will help costs, but they will still be expensive like a car, not like a TV.

Probably. But you wouldn't buy one of these robots every year. You would replace them at the same rythm as any other mature technology (fridge, dish washer, etc). Obviously not the early models, but democratisation is not about the early models.