Industrial & SMB robotAnnounced
XPeng IRON
China's answer to Optimus — same playbook, same missing receipts.
We haven't tested this machine hands-on, so this profile carries no rating — every fact below traces to the sources at the end, and the judgments are clearly ours. Full methodology on the Robot Tracker.
At a glance
- Status
- AnnouncedDemos and plans; no deliveries yet
- Can you buy it?
- No
- Price
- Not for sale; customer deliveries planned from 2027
- Form factor
- Bipedal humanoid
- AI brain
- 3× in-house Turing chips (2,250 TOPS) + XPeng VLA 2.0
- Maker
- XPeng (China)
- Backing
- Part of XPeng (NYSE: XPEV / HKEX: 9868)
If Tesla's Optimus has a mirror image, it's XPeng's IRON: an EV maker betting its manufacturing muscle on humanoids, with specs that read like a flagship phone launch — 178 cm, 70 kg, solid-state batteries, three in-house Turing chips totaling 2,250 TOPS, and the company's second-generation VLA model. In February 2026 XPeng broke ground on a 110,000 m² 'full-chain' robot factory in Guangzhou, targeting mass production by end-2026; in June, CEO He Xiaopeng took personal command of the robotics unit, calling it 'the eve of mass production.'
The Optimus parallel cuts both ways: like Tesla, XPeng has automotive-grade manufacturing and an in-house AI stack; also like Tesla, it has zero delivered robots, and its own plan puts real customer deliveries in 2027 — after trial runs in XPeng's own retail stores. A senior robotics executive departed in June 2026. Enormous potential, no receipts yet: the definition of 'announced.'
What's real
- • Automotive manufacturing DNA plus a dedicated 110,000 m² robot factory under construction — the credible version of the scale story
- • Serious in-house silicon and AI: three Turing chips (2,250 TOPS) and XPeng's VLA 2.0
- • A dated, falsifiable commitment: mass production by end-2026, customer deliveries from 2027
Know before you watch (or buy)
- • Zero robots delivered; first deployments will be XPeng's own retail stores, not customers
- • Key robotics executive departed in June 2026 as the CEO took direct control — read the reshuffle how you will
- • The 'mass production by year-end' framing is exactly the claim this industry most often misses
The evidence
Factory groundbreaking (110,000 m², Guangzhou, 2026); mass production targeted end-2026; CEO took direct control of the robotics unit Jun 2026; customer deliveries planned 2027.
Sources: CnEVPost · Reuters (via MarketScreener)
Bottom line
The most credible of the automaker-humanoid bets after Tesla's — arguably more credible, given the dedicated factory and dated plan. But it's a 2027 story being told in 2026: check back when a robot IRON leaves an XPeng store and enters a customer's building.
FAQ
When can you buy an XPeng IRON robot?
Not yet, and not soon. XPeng targets mass production by end-2026, with the robots first trialed in its own retail stores; deliveries to commercial customers in China and overseas are planned from 2027. No consumer availability or pricing has been announced.