XPeng plans to roll out its IRON humanoid robot in Europe in the second half of 2027, Founder and CEO He Xiaopeng said at a media event in Paris on Sunday, the first time the company has given a European timetable for the robot.
A slide He Xiaopeng presented at XPeng’s Paris Night, held on the eve of the Paris Motor Show, set out three steps for the robot.
Mass production is only a few months away (coming in “late 2026”), deliveries begin in the first half of 2027 and the “European Rollout” follows in the second half of 2027, according to the slide.
XPeng did not say which European countries would come first, how the robot would be sold, or at what price.
From ‘Overseas’ to Europe
XPeng had previously given only a year, and no region, for IRON’s arrival outside China.
“Official market launch and delivery in China and overseas markets are planned for 2027,” the company said on September 8, when it commissioned the robot’s production lines in Guangzhou.
XPeng’s announcement of its robotics funding round on August 24 gave the same timing, with sales and deliveries in China and overseas markets from 2027.
At its Munich launch event for the L03 SUV in July, XPeng said it would take IRON to the global market in 2027.
The Wall Street Journal reported in July, citing people familiar with the matter, that XPeng would deploy IRON as a sales assistant in its Chinese stores from the first quarter of 2027 and extend the programme to overseas stores later that year.
Commerce First
XPeng has said the robot’s first jobs will be commercial.
“The first commercial deployments are set to begin in XPENG sales centers and on XPENG company premises,” the company’s European arm said on September 9.
“The initial focus will be guided tours, shopping assistance and accompanying patrols,” it said.
He Xiaopeng had argued at XPeng’s AI Day in November 2025 that it was too costly to deploy humanoids in factories given the low price of labour in China, and played down the prospect of household use any time soon.
The slide now places industry and the home as later stages, without dates for either.
The Production Line
XPeng said on September 8 that the first IRON to complete assembly on the new lines walked off on its own, and that more than 80% of core processes were automated.
“Today’s step is small, but XPENG is building the production lines for an entirely new product category,” He Xiaopeng said at the time.
The production robot has 76 degrees of freedom across the body and 21 in each hand, and runs on three of XPeng’s Turing chips delivering up to 2,250 TOPS, the company said.
Those figures are lower than the 82 and 22 XPeng gave when it unveiled this generation of IRON in November 2025, and the company has not explained the change.
XPeng also described IRON at that launch as the first humanoid to carry an all-solid-state battery, but its September release did not mention the battery.
The company has not disclosed the capacity of the lines or how many robots it has built.
XPeng said in July it was targeting capacity of more than 1,000 robots a month by the end of 2026, but did not repeat the figure in September.
The robot’s per-unit gross margin “is expected to be significantly higher than that of new energy vehicles,” XPeng said in September.
Money and Management
XPeng’s robotics unit, Dogotix, agreed in August to raise more than $900 million at a post-money valuation above $6.3 billion, in a round led by IDG Capital with Tencent and Alibaba as strategic investors.
XPeng said on Sunday that its group-wide research and development spending reached €770 million ($863 million) in the first half of 2026, up 39% from a year earlier.
He Xiaopeng took direct charge of the business in June.
“Effective immediately, in addition to serving as CEO of XPeng Group, I will personally also serve as ‘CEO’ of the robotics business,” he wrote in an internal letter, according to Yicai.
He has also had to defend the robot’s authenticity.
After IRON walked a catwalk at XPeng’s AI Day in Guangzhou in November 2025, online commenters claimed a person was inside it.
XPeng staff cut open the covering on the robot’s leg the following evening while it was powered on, and the robot then walked on.
On Show in Paris
XPeng’s stand at the Paris Motor Show includes a humanoid robot zone, one of four areas alongside its technology stack, AI-defined vehicles and flying cars, according to the company.
A slide shown at Sunday’s event presented XPeng as “A Physical AI Company,” placing the humanoid robot alongside its AI cars and flying cars on a shared base of its own Turing AI chip and Turing Physical World Foundation Model.
XPeng named its robotaxi service XPENG YOYO last week and opened sign-ups in China through invitation codes.
The European robot timetable came at the same event where He Xiaopeng said the L03 SUV had drawn 12,136 orders in Europe, and where the company said its L05 SUV would reach Europe in early 2027.
