XPeng is going to great lengths to prove its next-generation humanoid robot is not some cosplayer.
The Chinese EV maker stunned audiences when it revealed its newly upgraded flagship humanoid, Iron, with lifelike movements and aesthetics that are equal parts Westworld and Catwoman. It came a year after XPeng introduced its first iteration of Iron with a demo of it performing industrial tasks. This time, Iron V2 showed off its soft synthetic skin and uncanny motions with a catwalk.
As footage from the spectacle went viral on social media, a growing chorus of skeptics speculated that the robot was just a person in disguise. Xpeng took the unusual step of countering the conspiracy theories with footage of engineers undressing and cutting through the robot’s synthetic skin with scissors to reveal its mechanical internals.
In a video posted to YouTube, Xpeng Chairman/CEO He Xiaopeng appeared amused as he read comments from skeptics. Standing next to an Iron humanoid, he said it’s more apparent than it’s a machine in person, noting its audible cooling system humming and its highly dexterous robotic hands.
“I believe that Chinese robots, including many from startup teams, in 2025, 2026, and 2027 will show the world even more advanced humanoid robots,” he said.
Xiaopeng said robots in the not-so-distant future will have human-like autonomy and communication capabilities. He called scaling production of general-purpose robots “our generation’s mission as entrepreneurs.”
“It’s also our responsibility,” he said. “We will bring robots into mass production. Please believe in us.”
During his AI Day keynote, the chairman said the robot’s design is a deliberate shift to make robots more aesthetically pleasing to the general public. He said the robot will be available in feminine and masculine variants and will be customizable. If Xpeng follows through on that, it could spark a submarket of small businesses offering custom humanoid skins, much like the $25 billion smartphone case market.
Built with a humanlike spinal column, the new and improved Iron humanoid features a sculpted female-presenting silhouette with contoured armor and bionic muscles. It stands 178 cm (5 feet 10 inches) and weighs 70 kg (154 lbs). Future iterations are expected to be scaled down. According to Xpeng, three of its self-developed Turing AI chips deliver more than 2,200 TOPS of compute, about the same amount required for a self-driving car.
Iron’s exoskeleton is made of lightweight composite materials with panels that resemble musculature rather than machinery. Its synthetic skin has tactile sensing.
It’s one of the first humanoids to run on a solid state battery, which is higher in energy density, faster charging, and safer than traditional lithium-ion cells. Humanoids are becoming a platform to test larger scale deployment of solid state batteries into electric vehicles as the technology matures. The Shenzhen startup Engine says its next-gen heavyweight humanoid, named the T-800 after Arnold in The Terminator, also runs on a solid-state pack.
Xpeng claims Iron can already perform complex actions guided by its vision-language-action (VLA) model, which is the same kind of artificial intelligence that powers rival humanoids like Tesla’s Optimus, the Figure 03, and 1X’s Neo. The company says its VLA 2.0 model differs because it removes the so-called language bottleneck where visual input must be translated into words before action. The architecture uses a direct vision-to-action pathway that skips the textual reasoning step, which Xpeng says unlocks faster and more natural physical responses.
Iron’s five-fingered hands boast a reported 22 degrees of freedom (DoF), which is in the upper echelon of dexterous end effectors hitting the market today. It matches the manual dexterity of the Gen 3 Tesla Optimus, which Xpeng is positioning Iron as a direct competitor to.
Leading up to the event, Xpeng shared a teaser image on social media with the headline “We, Robots,” an obvious lay on Tesla’s 2024 We, Robot spectacle at Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood. During that event, Elon Musk framed the Tesla Bot as the core pillar of the manufacturer’s long-term vision.
Founded in 2014, Xpeng formally ventured into robotics in 2020 when it acquired the Shenzhen startup Dogotix and installed its founder, Zhao Tongyang, as head of its humanoid program. Tongyang has since launched his own startup, EngineAI, which also encountered skeptics when it introduced its SE01 and PM01 humanoids because of their freakishly humanlike bipedal locomotion.
Like Tesla, Xpeng plans to scale production of its humanoid by the end of 2026. For now, they’re targeting service use cases and not home deployments. The robot showcased during the tech day is almost certainly not designed for mass manufacturing.
During his speech, the chairman said he doesn’t believe any company can safely deploy humanoids into households with the current state of technology. He said he could change his mind if there’s a breakthrough.