Su Zhen, the former head of Huawei's automatic driving, left his job to lead to speculation

Figure: Figure worm

Source: 21tech

Author: Ni Yuqing

Editor: Zhang Weixian

Recently, the former head of Huawei's automatic driving, Su Zhen, was rumored to leave, and on January 26, many people from Huawei confirmed the news to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter.

Su Zhen was dismissed because Of Huawei's autonomous driving business was out of the circle and was also dismissed due to comments related to automatic driving. In July 2021, Huawei has issued a document to dismiss Su Zhen as the director of the intelligent driving product department and transferred to the reserve team for training and assignment, and Bian Honglin took over Su Zhen as the new director of the intelligent driving product department.

At that time, there was news that Su Zhen would join Weilai, but both Weilai and Su Zhen himself denied it. Nowadays, there are also different interpretations of Su Zhen's departure and whereabouts, there are rumors that the departure is related to volkswagen cooperation, Su Zhen will lead the team to join Volkswagen, as the CTO of the autonomous driving company set up by Volkswagen in China; some insiders said that after the spread of Su Zhen's remarks, it has had some impact on cooperation between the industry.

In retrospect, Su Zhen served as the chief architect of Huawei Terminal Company, was a typical technical faction, and was previously the director of the erection department, mainly responsible for decision-making technology. Subsequently, Su Zhen became the person in charge of intelligent driving of the car, had more management responsibilities, and spoke out to the outside world.

Previously, he mentioned "kill" many times when talking about Tesla's autopilot accident on the forum: "When the machine enters human society and human symbiosis, the machine will definitely cause the accident rate, and the ugly point is 'killing', but it is said that we want to reduce its accident probability to the lowest possible." Probabilistically, this is something that can happen. In public, this statement of polytechnic technical thinking has sparked controversy.

Then Su Zhen's position changed, at that time Huawei responded: "Our company's intelligent car solution BU Su Zhen in the external activities to talk about automatic driving technology and safety, against Tesla, made inappropriate remarks, Su Zhen has conducted a deep review of his personal inappropriate remarks, but in view of the adverse impact of his remarks, our company decided to remove Su Zhen intelligent car solution BU intelligent driving products department director. Su Zhen will go to the strategic reserve to receive training and assignment. ”

On the one hand, Huawei's car BU, as a new star, is still constantly adjusting, including changes in the senior team. Previously, Zhang Xiaohong, former director of Huawei's AUTO BU Intelligent Driving Product Group, also joined NIO in April 2021; according to Caijing, Chen Qi, founder of Huawei's autopilot team and former director of the autopilot research and development department, has joined Geely's pure electric brand Extreme Kr as vice president of autonomous driving.

On the other hand, the talent in the autonomous driving industry has been constantly flowing, and when the pattern is undecided, the competition for talents is also quite fierce. Huawei's autonomous driving, chip talent is also flowing, there are people close to Huawei told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that Huawei HiSilicon's technical experts will join Weilai to participate in the research and development of autonomous driving chips. At present, the competition from autonomous driving systems to chips is becoming more and more fierce, and car manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers, and crossovers are recruiting for the next round of competition.

Editor: Lu Taoran