The vehicle is the cheap part. The project around it is not.
Both guide prices are published on this page. What usually decides the budget is everything after the vehicle, and most quotes arrive without it.
- Vehicle
- P300 or P1500, ex-works
- Charging
- Station plus the power to reach it
- Engineering
- Survey, mapping, traffic rules
- Integration
- WMS, MES, doors, lifts
- Service
- Spares, response time, annual check
Two numbers, published openly.
Both figures are SEER end-user guide prices in mainland China. The dollar amounts are converted at 1 USD = 6.67 CNY and quoted ex-works, which means freight, duty and site work sit outside them.
P300 — 69,999 RMB
About US$10,490 ex-works. 300 kg lifting platform, 580 mm minimum aisle, 988 mm turning diameter. Guide price for the China end user.
P1500 — 79,800 RMB
About US$11,960 ex-works. 1,500 kg pallet carrier, 990 mm minimum aisle, 1,800 mm for right-angle stacking into racking. Same basis.
Why publish a price at all
Most integrators quote only after a site visit, which leaves a buyer with nothing to anchor a budget against. A guide price is not a quotation. It is a number you can sanity-check a plan with before either side spends money.
What the figure excludes
Freight and insurance, import duty and clearance, on-site survey, engineering, commissioning, operator training, spare parts, and the charging station itself.
Guide prices are set by SEER Robotics and may change without notice. The exchange rate moves too. A written quotation supersedes this page.
The layers that get added.
In a single-vehicle deployment the vehicle is often not the largest line. These are the layers that follow it, and each one carries its own cost driver.
Charging infrastructure
One station per two to three vehicles, plus the power drop to reach it. Running a supply to a distant corner of the warehouse usually costs more than the station.
Route survey and engineering
Mapping, traffic rules, exclusion zones, and deciding which aisles become one-way. Done properly this is days of work, not hours.
Integration
Handshakes with WMS, MES, automatic doors, lifts and conveyors. This is where projects overrun, because every third-party system has its own interface and its own owner.
Commissioning and training
Bringing the fleet to stable cycle time on site, then teaching operators and maintenance staff. Training is not optional — an untrained shift parks the robot in a corner and calls it broken.
Service and spares
Response time, spare parts held locally, an annual check. The question worth asking is what happens on a Sunday night when a vehicle faults.
Floor and layout work
Line marking, floor repair, rack protector adjustment. Cheap individually, disruptive collectively, and almost never in the first quote.
Same vehicle, different totals.
Two sites can buy the same model and end up an order of magnitude apart. These are the variables, roughly in order of impact.
Vehicles versus routes
Four vehicles on one route is a different project from one vehicle on four routes. The second needs more mapping, more traffic rules and more charging positions.
Whether the WMS can be touched
If integration is permitted, the cost is engineering time. If the WMS is untouchable, the cost is middleware and workarounds, and the timeline belongs to someone else.
Building age and floor quality
Uneven joints, ramps, polished concrete and narrow door frames all affect navigation reliability — and how much remediation happens before go-live.
Who does the work
A reseller who subcontracts commissioning adds a margin layer. An integrator who commissions with their own engineers does not, but charges for the engineers. Both are legitimate; only one is visible in the price.
Duty and freight lane
The same vehicle landed in Rotterdam and landed in Ho Chi Minh City are two different numbers before anything is switched on.
Over five years, not at purchase.
The purchase-price comparison is the least useful one. Guided vehicles are usually cheaper to buy and more expensive to change. The arithmetic depends on how often your layout moves.
Capital cost
AGV is typically lower per vehicle — simpler sensing, mature hardware, more suppliers competing on price.
Installation cost
AGV is higher. Tape, magnets or reflectors have to be laid, and the building has to cooperate. An AMR maps the site instead of modifying it.
Cost of a layout change
AGV pays again every time: new tape, new route, production downtime. An AMR re-maps the affected area. This single line usually decides the five-year total.
Cost of scale
Adding the tenth AGV means extending the guidance infrastructure. Adding the tenth AMR means finding somewhere to charge it.
Where AGV still wins
Long, fixed, high-volume routes that will not change. If that describes your plant, buy AGV and spend the difference on throughput.
Both technologies are legitimate. The mistake is treating this as a company-wide decision when it is a route-by-route one.
Four situations where the answer is no.
We would rather write this on a web page than say it three months into a project. If any of these describes your site, an AMR is the wrong purchase and a different conversation is worth having.
The route is fixed and will stay fixed
If a conveyor or a guided vehicle does the job at a fraction of the cost, an AMR is a subscription to complexity you did not ask for.
Volume is too low to amortise it
A vehicle that runs two hours a day does not repay its engineering. Count the labour hours saved per week before projecting per year.
The building cannot take it
Aisles below the vehicle minimum, no defensible charging location, floors that flood. Some of this is fixable. Some of it means a different building.
Nobody will own it after handover
Without one named person responsible for the fleet, robots degrade into obstacles within a year. This is the most common failure, and it is organisational rather than technical.
What to send us first.
Send these six things and the first figure you get back will be close. Send less and you will receive a wide range that helps nobody, including us.
Load and carrier
Pallet or container type, weight, dimensions, and whether the load is stable when lifted.
Aisle measurements
Narrowest clear width, and the cross aisle at every turn the route will make.
Cycle and volume
Moves per hour at peak, and operating hours per day.
Drop points
How many stations, and whether any sit inside racking or behind doors.
Systems to connect
WMS, MES, ERP, doors, lifts — and who owns each one internally.
Floor plan or photographs
A marked-up drawing beats a description every time. Phone photos of the tightest corner are worth more than a specification.
What buyers ask before the site visit.
The five questions that arrive by email before anyone is ready to book a survey.
01How much does a SEER AMR cost?
The P300 guide price is 69,999 RMB in mainland China, about US$10,490 ex-works at 1 USD = 6.67 CNY. The P1500 is 79,800 RMB, about US$11,960. These are vehicle prices. A commissioned single-vehicle deployment carries additional engineering, charging, integration and training costs on top.
02Is the dollar figure the price I will actually pay?
No. The dollar amounts are the RMB guide price converted for reference, quoted ex-works. Freight, insurance, import duty, clearance and all site work are separate, and the exchange rate at the time of order applies.
03Is an AMR cheaper than an AGV?
Usually not at purchase. An AGV is typically cheaper per vehicle because the guidance hardware is simpler and more suppliers compete on it. The AMR case rests on the cost of change: re-routing an AGV means laying new tape or magnets and losing production time, while re-mapping an AMR does not.
04What is the smallest deployment that makes sense?
One vehicle on one route, if that route is genuinely painful. Below that, a tow tractor or a conveyor is cheaper. Engineering overhead is largely fixed, so a single vehicle only justifies itself when the route is bad enough.
05Do you charge for the site survey?
The first conversation and a review of your floor plan are free. A full route survey — measured aisles, cycle timing, a written layout recommendation — is a paid engagement, and the fee is stated before work starts.
06How long does a deployment take?
A single vehicle on a straightforward route moves from survey to go-live in weeks rather than months. What stretches it is integration with a WMS, lift controller or door system, because that timeline belongs to the third-party supplier.