its 100% in R&D. Real commodity hardware is sold at ~3x raw material cost, with R&D amortized over millions of units and very long period. Every time you see something made in china and go "how the hell can this be so cheap" is seeing real commodity price, with no R&D and middleman margins. People will argue about quality, by writing replies on keyboards that cost $5 to make in China, and clicking send with $0.2 BoYue microswitch in their $70(retail) mouse.
You could in theory make 500K robots at 5K if you give up any notion of recouping development cost by tackling ridiculous margins, and instead concentrate on moving millions of units.
Why aren't cars $5k then? Heck most basic motorcycles are $7k plus and they're well understood and very simple.
Cherry QQ (chevy spark copy) is ~$5K in china, being a ripoff removed R&D cost.
Great you literally cherry picked the lowest possible example for your argument. So after 100 years of development and ip theft yes the least featured model might be at that price level. I concede the argument. I look forward to getting my cheap robot in 100 years on the libertarian colony of vega
Cheapest "cars" in China start under $1K, Cherry QQ is actually decent in comparison. Want different example? How about micro controllers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rixo78hv_lw 3 cent in Asia, cheapest US based manufacturer offerings start at 30 cent.
Not to mention that humans run on food, produce little waste heat, are portable, and regenerate many tissues as needed for decades until we enter EOL.
As a data point. The original Valkyrie cost ~12.5 million. Thats hardware and software dev over about 3 years. I'm not positive about the subsequent copies, but I've heard they're in million to 2 million.
Humanoids are just extremely complicated systems with a lot of moving parts that require very high reliability, along with a metric ton of sensors and the wiring harness needed to support all of it.
For reference, a standard brushless DC motor that is reliable enough, strong enough, and precise enough for use in a robot will retail for around $1000. Just for the motor. And you need at least 30 of them, probably more.