XPENG IRON

What it is

IRON is a humanoid robot from XPENG, a Chinese carmaker. XPENG unveiled its first humanoid robot at XPENG AI Day on 6 November 2024^[1][3], and showed a new generation at its 2025 AI Day on 5 November 2025^[2]. Much of the machine is built from parts and software the company had already developed for its cars.

The first IRON

XPENG said the 2024 robot had been developed over five years and had more than 60 joints and more than 200 degrees of freedom^[1]. Media reports described it in more concrete numbers. The China Securities Journal wrote that IRON was built at 1:1 human scale, with 62 degrees of freedom in the body and 15 in the hands^[3]. Global Times, citing China Economic Times, reported a height of 178 cm and a weight of 70 kg^[4]. Degrees of freedom are the independent directions in which a mechanism can move; the more a robot has, the finer and more varied its movements can be.

Much of the hardware came from the car business. IRON used XPENG's self-developed Turing AI chip, with 3,000 TOPS of computing power^[4]. For perception it used the Eagle Eye vision system from XPENG's cars, which the company said achieved 720-degree environmental perception without blind spots^[3]. Walking was controlled by an end-to-end large model together with reinforcement learning algorithms^[3] — an approach in which the control behaviour is learned from experience rather than written step by step by hand.

The robot was put to work early: at the time of the launch, XPENG said IRON was already doing trial work at its Guangzhou factory on the P7+ production line^[4].

The second generation

At the 2025 AI Day XPENG presented a redesigned IRON. The new machine had 82 degrees of freedom in total and 22 degrees of freedom in each hand^[2]. Computing moved to three Turing AI chips with 2,250 TOPS of effective computing power^[2]. XPENG said the robot was the first in the industry to use an all-solid-state battery^[2]; such batteries use a solid electrolyte instead of the liquid one found in most lithium-ion cells, and are pursued partly for safety and energy density.

The body also changed: XPENG described a bionic spine, bionic muscles and fully covered flexible skin that could be customised to different body types^[2]. On the software side, XPENG said the new IRON ran its first-generation physical world model, combining VLT, VLA and VLM capabilities for dialogue, walking and interaction^[2]. These acronyms point to models that connect what a machine sees, what it is told in language, and what it does, so that perception can be turned into movement and conversation.

Where it fits

XPENG said the new-generation IRON would first be deployed in commercial settings such as guidance, shopping assistance and patrol^[2]. Across both generations the technical story has stayed the same: a self-developed AI chip, large-model control, and perception technology shared with the company's cars. For a carmaker, the robot is both a new product line and a test of whether its AI and hardware work can move beyond the vehicle.