That hardly stops there. You'd be surprised how much a modern company that makes physical products can cut the need to be "in the same space". Nowadays designing, training and even testing can be done digitally up to a point where a decision of mass production is made. VR/ER for Inspecting plants or training staff with equipment that is still being produced on the other side of the globe (you can use extended reality to use it in actual space it will be used, or full VR, to interact with it with overview of its surroundings, being able to fully test software and UI of screens the machinery has, etc).
That is not the future, these are things that are actively used, successfully, now.
Exactly. My first remote job (pre Covid!) was for a hardware company.
Surprisingly few jobs require daily hands-on work nowadays.