Japan's companion robot gets 12% dearer — and the sticker was never the price

GROOVE X announced on 1 September 2026 that LOVOT 3.0, its wheeled companion robot, will cost more in two steps: the base colour goes from JPY 577,500 to JPY 599,500 on 26 October 2026, and to a planned JPY 649,000 in mid-January 2027. The company gives the reason plainly — rising prices of raw materials and parts, and higher manufacturing and logistics costs — and says the four-month, two-stage schedule is meant to give buyers time to decide. The older LOVOT 2.0 stays at JPY 449,900. That is a 12.4 percent rise on a robot that does nothing useful by design: it does not clean, carry or answer questions, it asks to be picked up. What the announcement does not say is that the purchase price has never been the whole cost. LOVOT cannot be used without a monthly plan, which carries the software, the cloud services and the servicing: JPY 9,900 a month at the cheapest tier, JPY 12,980 for the tier GROOVE X itself recommends, JPY 19,800 for full cover. Put the two together and the proportions change. At the recommended tier the subscription costs JPY 155,760 a year. Four years of it — roughly the interval at which the price list schedules a servo replacement pack — comes to JPY 623,040, more than the new purchase price of the robot itself. The announced increase raises the entry ticket by JPY 71,500; a single year of the plan costs more than twice that. None of this is hidden: the figures come from the company's own price list, which also states the servicing intervals and the colour surcharges of up to JPY 122,100. It is worth stating clearly all the same, because a headline price is what gets compared. Against a Chinese humanoid that keeps getting cheaper, LOVOT looks expensive. Against the four-year cost of keeping one alive, the sticker is the smaller half.