Robotics · 12 October 2026 · 6 min read
XPENG gives IRON a European date: the second half of 2027
He Xiaopeng set the timetable in Paris on 11 October. Mass production is still “late 2026,” deliveries still the first half of 2027. Europe is the new line on the slide. Price, countries and a seller are not on it.
XPENG has put a region on a date it had previously left as “overseas.” Founder and chief executive He Xiaopeng, speaking at the company’s Paris Night on 11 October, the eve of the Paris Motor Show, showed a slide with three steps. Mass production of the IRON humanoid in late 2026. Deliveries beginning in the first half of 2027. A European rollout in the second half of 2027. Humanoids Daily and a report from the Paris event both carry that sequence. It is the first time the company has named Europe rather than a year and the word overseas.
The earlier statement, from 8 September, when XPENG said its humanoid line in Guangzhou was in operation, was looser. Market launch and delivery in China and overseas markets were planned for 2027. The same window appeared in an August funding note and at a Munich event in July. Paris does not move the year. It splits the year: China and first deliveries in the first half, Europe in the second. A narrower target is more useful than a calendar year. It is still a target.
The first job is the showroom, not the line
XPENG’s European arm has already said where the first machines are supposed to work. Not in a customer’s factory. In XPENG sales centres and on the company’s own sites. The tasks named in September were guided tours, shopping assistance and accompanying patrols. Paris did not replace that list with a harder one. A robot that walks a visitor around a showroom is a commercial use. It is also a use with a person nearby, a known building, and a script. It is not evidence that IRON can take a station on a car line.
What Paris did not say is as concrete as what it did. No first country. No price. No distributor, and no count of units reserved for Europe. A company can hit “late 2026” production and still have nothing a European buyer can order. The production claim itself is still the company’s: a line commissioned in September, a monthly rate it hopes to reach, and a walk-off demonstration. None of that is a European delivery.
The reason this desk is filing it is the direction of the date. Humanoid announcements usually move the horizon out. This one moved a vague “next year, somewhere” into a half-year and a continent. If the second half of 2027 arrives and the robot is still a slide, the narrowing will have been the useful fact. If a sales centre in Europe is actually giving tours with one, the slide will have been a schedule.