At the China Society of Automotive Engineers annual meeting on Oct. 28, a Xpeng vice president said the solid-state battery built for its IRON humanoid robot has begun small-batch production, ahead of the robot body itself reaching that stage.
The battery uses a high-energy-density design tailored to the robot's limited internal space and redefines cell standards for robotic use, adding anti-thermal-runaway propagation features that pass impact and nail-penetration tests.
Xpeng plans to mass-produce IRON by the end of 2026 and deploy it in commercial scenarios such as stores from 2027. It was not explicitly confirmed whether the route is fully solid-state or a semi-solid hybrid.
The disclosure highlights how Chinese EV makers are repurposing automotive battery know-how for humanoid robotics, a fast-converging frontier.
Image: Humanoid robot Unitree G1. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
