Elon Musk has been at the heart of promoting various companies throughout the 21st century, with two of his most prominent companies anchored in the notion of mass production. In the case of his infamous clunky and angular Tesla Cybertruck, he encountered several difficulties in bringing the prototype to market.

Planting the seed

Musk was speaking about the rigors of bringing the Cybertruck to life during an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.

Rogan asked how far away Musk was from delivering the vehicle to people, with Musk revealing at the time that the timing was about a month away.

But the prototype was initially unveiled in November 2019. Explaining the delay, the Tesla CEO hinted that the process of manufacturing the vehicle proved much harder than expected given the need for consistency in producing each model.

Rinse and repeat

There's an element of common sense in buying into the idea that making a prototype is much easier than mass-producing a finished version of that product.

Not only is there a much lower tolerance for error, but establishing the supply chain for materials, components, and resources is far more complex. Then there's the economics of it all – ensuring that the cost to produce one vehicle can, at least, be recouped by a customer should there even be a willingness to pay for it.

It's reminiscent of the "production hell" phrasing that Musk has also frequently deployed through the years – especially during a manufacturing crisis between 2017 and 2018. During this time, the Tesla production line became a futuristic and automated process known as the "alien dreadnought" – but this robotic network eventually slowed down manufacturing and prevented Tesla vehicles from being ready on time.

BERLIN — An eerily lifelike humanoid robot made by Chinese technology company Xpeng has now entered mass production, company representatives revealed. They say it'll be the first such machine to walk itself off the production line.

The humanoid robot, dubbed IRON, went viral last year after presenters sliced it open onstage to prove a human wasn't inside. Xpeng will now produce units through its existing production facilities, with no word on how many its factories will aim to build.

The fabric skin-clad machine comes in different body shapes and even genders, but all stand approximately 5 feet 7 inches tall (173 centimeters) and weigh 143 pounds (65 kilograms). The prototype included 82 degrees of freedom (DoF) head to toe, including 22 DoF in each hand, which differs from the production version's 76 DoF and 21 DoF respectively. They can also move at speeds of up to 6.5 feet per second (approximately 2 meters per second), which is equivalent to a fast power walk.

In conversations with Live Science at IFA 2026, held in Berlin between Sept. 4 and 8, Xpeng representatives claimed that their machines will one day be used in homes to help with domestic chores like cleaning and folding laundry. They likened the introduction of humanoid robots more generally to the rise of smartphones in the mid-2000s and expect robots to proliferate on a similar scale over the next few years.

As such, they have extremely lofty expectations for IRON, with the company branding it the world's first "high-level, general-purpose" humanoid robot. Representatives added that it can receive instructions, plan its strategy, navigate the environment intelligently, and avoid obstacles without trial and error. The robot also has a "self-charging" feature, meaning it will seek out designated charging cabins and plug itself in when low on battery.

The rise of humanoid robots

If the claims bear out, it will place IRON among the first such machines powered by artificial intelligence to be built on a massive scale. Competitors that have also entered mass production include American robotics company Figure AI's Figure 03, which in May participated in a live-streamed production line demonstration, as well as the Chinese AGIBOT, which reached 15,000 units in June.

One notable company that hasn't entered its robot into mass production is Tesla. The Optimus robot is still in factory assembly, and its release has been delayed four times since 2022, most recently last year. Xpeng representatives were keen to point this out in briefing materials shared with Live Science, without mentioning other humanoid robot makers.

IRON's makers claim it's more advanced than its counterparts. Rather than building separate AI engines, the company has deployed the same "world model" to power the robot as that used in its fleet of AI-enabled electric vehicles (EVs) and its flying car prototypes.

One of the biggest challenges in robotics is that, given the physical world's messiness, AI systems struggle to navigate and manipulate their environment unless conditions are controlled. That's why we're used to seeing robots either completing tasks slowly or getting things spectacularly wrong. Researchers, therefore, are increasingly focusing on building world models and other layers like improved vision-language-action (VLA) systems that enable them to better plan their actions a few steps ahead.

Xpeng representatives won't share detailed information about the proprietary AI system powering IRON, but each robot features three frameworks that combine so it can function autonomously.

The frameworks include VLA, which combines visual perception, natural language, and physical motor control; a vision-language model (VLM) — combining vision encoders with text readers; and a vision-language-task/thought (VLT) model, which representatives say gives IRON reasoning capabilities that enable it to think through assigned tasks.

Each IRON robot is powered by three Turing AI chips that offer a collective 2,250 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of AI processing power. This means it can run a model equivalent to Meta's Llama 3.2 (launched in 2024) locally without needing to access the internet. By contrast, most new laptops that can perform simple on-device AI tasks (like altering your webcam video feed in real time) tap into approximately 50 TOPS.

"We aim to build a new type of robot with full generalization capabilities that can truly become part of everyday life, create a better life for people, and ultimately become a companion in their lives," said He Xiaopeng, the company's chairman and CEO, in a statement shared with Live Science.

The company will first install these robots in its own showrooms and technology campuses while it continues to validate new ways to use them. Then in 2027, external shipments will target commercial customers for roles in areas such as customer service or guided tours in China primarily, and then in other countries.