XPeng Switches On Its First Humanoid Robot Factory as Tesla’s Optimus Line Stays Idle

According to XPeng’s press announcement, its IRON humanoid robot completed final assembly and walked off a production line under its own power yesterday, as the company commissioned what it’s calling the world’s first automated production line built specifically for advanced humanoid robots.

Volume production is still set for the end of 2026, with the first robots deployed inside XPeng’s own stores and campuses before a wider commercial launch across China and overseas markets in 2027. What’s actually new is that IRON now comes off a real manufacturing line instead of being assembled by hand in a lab, with more than 80% of the line’s core processes automated using the same quality systems XPeng already applies to its EV factories.

How does XPeng IRON compare to Tesla’s Optimus?
XPeng’s IRON has walked off an automated production line, while Tesla’s Optimus has faced repeated delays, with its Fremont production line still being installed as of mid 2026 and commercial sales now targeted for the second half of 2027.

The robot itself runs on 76 degrees of freedom across its body and 21 in each hand, wrapped in a proprietary, fully enclosed flexible lattice structure that XPeng designed to balance a human-like look with safety. Three in-house Turing AI chips give it up to 2,250 TOPS of onboard compute, enough to run XPeng’s Physical AI foundation model directly on the robot instead of relying on remote operation, which cuts latency and keeps data on the device. European visitors already got a preview of the hardware at IFA in Berlin earlier this month, well before this production milestone was announced.

There’s serious money riding on this too. XPeng’s robotics division raised more than €774 million on 24 August at a post money valuation above €5.4 billion, led by IDG Capital with Tencent and Alibaba among the strategic backers, and it’s the largest single funding round in China’s embodied AI sector to date.

Where This Leaves Tesla’s Optimus

IRON invites an obvious comparison with Tesla’s Optimus programme, which Elon Musk once promised would already be shipping by last year, only for production to keep missing its own deadlines ever since. Optimus was meant to begin limited production at Tesla’s Fremont plant in summer this year, once the Model S and Model X lines wound down to make room for it, but that target came and went too. Tesla’s Q2 2026 shareholder update swapped the specific date for a vaguer “anticipated later this year,” and commercial sales, once pencilled in for late 2026, are now expected in the second half of 2027. Musk has pointed to chip constraints and the complexity of Optimus’s hands among the reasons for the delay, but the result is simple: XPeng now has an automated line producing a robot that walks off it, while Tesla is still finishing installation of its own.

What are the specifications of the XPeng IRON robot?
IRON has 76 degrees of freedom across its body and 21 in each hand, powered by three in-house Turing AI chips delivering up to 2,250 TOPS of onboard compute.

XPeng’s own robotics division hasn’t been friction free either, something a separate piece on XPeng’s robotics leadership changes gets into. A working production line is a genuine milestone, but it doesn’t erase the harder questions sitting underneath it. Training these robots reliably still costs a fortune, nobody really knows how they hold up outside a showroom or a scripted demo, and turning a robot that can walk off a line into something people or businesses actually pay for is a completely different challenge.

Every major manufacturer chasing this technology is wrestling with the same questions, from Tesla and XPeng to the European carmakers now placing their own bets, which I compared in EV manufacturers and their humanoid robot programmes compared. Plenty of other manufacturers are working on humanoid robots too, without anywhere near the attention Tesla or XPeng get. Mitsubishi is one of them, running its own programme through its Kyoto plant.

Has XPeng’s IRON robot entered mass production?
Not yet, the company says volume production begins by the end of 2026, with commercial launch and deliveries in China and overseas following in 2027.

Featured Image: Xpeng