Xpeng plans Iron humanoid sales for second half of 2027
Xpeng plans to begin selling its Iron humanoid robot in the second half of 2027, after testing it in the company’s own stores and offices, according to Forbes Asia. Vice chairman and president Brian Gu outlined the timetable at the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Singapore. Mass production is scheduled for this year, Gu said, with robots expected to assist sales staff or serve as receptionists at Xpeng’s Guangzhou headquarters by early next year. These are company targets, not confirmed deployment results.
The initial roles described for the Xpeng Iron humanoid focus on customer interaction rather than factory work. Gu described Iron as a general purpose robot capable of interacting with people across a wide range of settings, but the report provides no task evaluations or evidence of sustained operation. Testing inside Xpeng’s own premises would give the company a setting to assess those functions before external sales. Forbes did not report a price, production volume, battery runtime or the level of autonomy planned for the store and office trials.
Iron uses Xpeng’s in-house Turing chip. Gu claimed the latest version closely matches Nvidia’s Thor chip in performance, although the report supplies no benchmark results or testing conditions to substantiate that comparison. He framed internal chip development around control of costs, software compatibility and supply stability. Xpeng began its robotics efforts about a decade ago and strengthened them through the 2021 acquisition of a startup now called Dogotix, according to Gu. For prospective operators, the planned internal trials still need to establish what Iron can reliably do in the sales assistant and receptionist roles before the proposed commercial launch.
Source: Forbes
