XPeng Says Its First Factory-Built Humanoid Robot Walked off the Line
XPeng, the Chinese electric-car maker, said on Sept. 8 that it has commissioned humanoid robot production lines in Guangzhou and that the first IRON robot built on them walked off the line under its own control.
The company describes the step as a move from research prototyping to line manufacturing, says it built the lines to the quality standards it uses for cars, and in its release puts core-process automation above 80%.
On XPeng's own account, IRON has 76 degrees of freedom, or separately moving joints, across its body and 21 in each hand, and runs on the company's Turing AI chips, with enough computing power to run its AI model on the robot itself rather than over a remote connection.
He Xiaopeng, XPeng's chairman and chief executive, said the lines "were created from scratch with no precedent to follow" and that "Today's step is small, but XPENG is building the production lines for an entirely new product category."
XPeng calls the lines the world's first automated production lines for advanced humanoid robots and describes IRON's dexterity and mobility as industry-leading. Those are the company's own assessments, and no outside party has measured either the lines or the robot.
XPeng plans to reach mass production by the end of 2026, with the first robots going to its own stores and campuses, and a market launch with deliveries in China and overseas in 2027. Both dates are company targets.
XPeng's robotics unit raised more than $900 million from investors in August, the company said.
