CEO Xiaopeng He focused a lot on what he calls “Physical AI”, which he describes as the merging of AI into physical products, aka robots.
This is similar to how Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been describing Tesla’s cars as “robots on wheels,” and it is now also working on humanoid robots.
Xpeng’s new VLA operating system, Xpeng VLA 2.0, is the basis of all other products announced today.
Unlike traditional “Vision-Language-Action” architectures that translate visual inputs into language before generating actions, the new VLA uses a direct “Vision–Implicit Token–Action” path — removing the language bottleneck entirely. The result is an AI that can interpret and respond to physical reality faster and more intuitively, almost like human reflexes.
To run such a massive model on production cars, Xpeng reengineered its stack for its Turing AI chips, achieving real-time performance with 2,250 TOPS of compute on its vehicles with its “Ultra” level of driver assist — an order of magnitude more complex than typical automotive AI models.
Ultra is Xpeng’s top level of ADAS in consumer vehicles, but the company also announced a new level today: Robo:
Robo is going to be for robotaxis. Xpeng announced that it will launch 3 new purpose-built electric vehicles for robotaxi services next year.
There will be a 5-seater, a 6-seater, and a 7-seater.
Trial operation is expected to start in 2026.
Xpeng has been working on robots for 7 years.
Xiaopeng said the company tried to operate IRON in its own manufacturing operations for a year, doing what it believed was the easiest human task to replace: tightening screws with a drill on the assembly line.
However, Xpeng concluded that it wouldn’t be efficient at scale due to the robot not performing as well as employees, especially on a cost basis, due to high repair and replacement costs.
Humanoid robots are way more complex and currently not as sturdy and efficient as industrial robots, which can lead to high repair costs.
Xiaopeng believes that humanoid robots will one day be widely used in manufacturing operations and in homes for household chores, but he thinks this is further down the road than the competition predicts.
Finally, the latest “intelligent AI-powered” product that Xpeng highlighted at its AI Day is its latest lineup of “flying cars” under its ARIDGE brand.