XPENG said on Sept. 8, 2026, that it had officially put its humanoid robot production lines into operation, and that the first advanced general-purpose IRON, a robot built in a human shape, walked off the line on its own once it was finished. The company called the move a leap from building research prototypes to manufacturing on production lines. For a Chinese electric-car maker carrying its car-industry quality systems into humanoid robots, the walk-off is a rare public sign of readiness to manufacture, not just another stage demo.
Starting the lines is not the same as mass production. XPENG still aims to begin mass production by the end of the year, with the first robots working in its own stores and campuses, and an official launch and deliveries in China and overseas planned for 2027. XPENG calls IRON the world's first advanced general-purpose humanoid to walk off such lines, a ranking no one outside the company has confirmed.
XPENG says the lines automate more than 80% of core processes and were built to car-industry quality standards. Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng said the robot production lines were created from scratch, with no precedent to follow. XPENG says IRON has 76 degrees of freedom, the separate ways its joints can move, including 21 in each hand, and that three of its Turing AI chips deliver up to 2,250 TOPS, or trillions of operations per second. The company says the chips let a general-purpose AI model for robots run on IRON itself, without remote operation.
XPENG says its robotics business raised more than $900 million in August, at a valuation above $6.3 billion once the new money is counted. Neither figure is proof that robots are shipping in volume.
It is not yet clear whether XPENG will reach mass production by year-end as planned, how much the lines can produce, what IRON will cost, or whether the robots in its stores and campuses will work under supervision or on their own. Until shipments are documented outside XPENG's own announcements, the walk-off, the automation figure and the 2027 delivery plan are the company's account, not proof that large-scale humanoid production has begun.