XPeng’s humanoid robot walks off production line, beating Tesla to manufacturing milestone

At a factory in Guangzhou, China, a humanoid robot assembled by machines walked off a production line on its own — a first for the emerging industry. XPeng ↘ 3.76% announced on Monday that it had completed production-line manufacturing of its IRON humanoid robot, a milestone the company called "a critical leap from R&D prototyping to production-lines manufacturing."investors

The achievement puts the Chinese electric vehicle maker ahead of Tesla ↗ 1.69% in the race to bring humanoid robots from the lab to the factory floor, as Tesla's Optimus program contends with repeated delays.

From Prototype to Production

XPeng said its Guangzhou facility is the world's first automated production line for advanced humanoid robots, with more than 80 percent of core processes automated. Machines assembled parts, installed electrical circuits, and welded components together before the IRON robot walked away from the line autonomously.interestingengineering+1

The IRON robot features 76 degrees of freedom across its body, with each hand offering 21, and runs on three Turing AI chips delivering up to 2,250 TOPS of onboard computing power. That design allows XPeng to run its physical AI foundation model directly on the robot rather than relying on remote computing.interestingengineering

"We aim to build a new type of robot with full generalization capabilities that can truly become part of everyday life," XPeng Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng said in a statement.interestingengineering

XPeng plans to begin mass production by the end of 2026, with initial commercial deployments at its own stores and campuses. Official market launch and delivery in China and overseas are planned for 2027.interestingengineering

Tesla's Optimus Timeline Slips Again

Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot, meanwhile, faces further delays. According to a JPMorgan Chase ↘ 0.17% note published in August, production of Optimus will start "in the coming months," with external commercial sales targeted for the second half of 2027. Earlier plans had called for production to begin during the summer of 2026 and initial sales by late 2026.investors+1

As of early 2026, Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that the several hundred Optimus units deployed were "still very much in the R&D phase," collecting training data rather than performing commercially valuable work.optimusk

A Widening Race

The contrast underscores growing competition between Chinese and American firms in humanoid robotics. XPeng broke ground on a roughly 110,000-square-meter robot manufacturing base in Guangzhou earlier this year and restructured its robotics unit in June, with He Xiaopeng personally taking charge of the division. Tesla, for its part, is building a second Optimus factory at Giga Texas with production expected to begin in the summer of 2027.eweek+2

Independent analysts have suggested that meaningful volume for Optimus may not arrive until 2028 or 2029.optimusk+1