Xpeng fires up automated Iron humanoid robot line, keeping year-end mass production on track

Xpeng has brought its humanoid robot production line online, with the company saying more than 80% of core processes on it are automated. In a sign the project has moved beyond prototype development, the first Iron unit assembled there walked off the line on its own. Xpeng bills the facility as the world's first automated line for advanced humanoid robots, adapting quality-control systems honed in its electric car business to precision robot manufacturing.

The timeline is unchanged: mass production is still targeted for the end of this year, with initial units deployed in Xpeng's own stores and campuses, followed by an official launch and deliveries in China and overseas in 2027. The company held back on capacity figures and pricing. Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng said the line was built "from scratch with no precedent to follow," with faster cycles and greater scale as the next goals.

The robot itself, shown in November 2025, has 76 degrees of freedom across its body, including 21 in each hand, and wears a fully enclosed flexible lattice structure meant to balance a human-like appearance with safety. Three in-house Turing AI chips deliver up to 2,250 TOPS of computing power, allowing Xpeng's physical AI foundation model to run on the robot itself and, the company says, enabling autonomous task execution without remote operation.

Xpeng is betting robotics can out-earn its car business on margin, arguing that high technical barriers and scarce quality supply should support better per-unit gross profit than NEVs. The line's commissioning follows a fresh capital injection: the company's Dogotix robotics unit signed agreements in late August for roughly $900 million in commitments led by IDG Capital, with Alibaba and Tencent among strategic backers — a round implying a post-money valuation near $6.3 billion, with Xpeng keeping control.