Robots making way for humans on car assembly lines

Munich

MERCEDES-BENZ offers the S-Class sedan with a growing array of options such as carbon-fibre trim, heated and cooled cupholders and four types of caps for the tyre valves, and the carmaker's robots can't keep up.

With customisation key to wooing modern consumers, the flexibility and dexterity of human workers is reclaiming space on Mercedes's assembly lines. That bucks a trend that has given machines the upper hand over manpower since legendary US railroad worker John Henry died trying to best a motorised hammer more than a century ago.