In the case of Huawei's declining mobile phone business, the new automobile business is undoubtedly the highlight of Huawei, but just recently, Huawei's automobile business has exposed a major personnel change.
According to relevant media reports, su zhen, the former director of the intelligent driving product department of Huawei's intelligent car solution BU, will leave before the Spring Festival, and the whereabouts of the new owner are unknown, and Huawei also confirmed this rumor later, and expressed "thanks to Su Zhen for his contribution to the car BU".
Smart Driving executive Su Zhen left
Su Zhen is an old man of Huawei, in 2004 when HiSilicon was founded, he participated in the establishment of the system design team, and later led the development of Huawei's Da Vinci AI chip architecture, and the famous Kirin chip is based on this architecture.
Later, after Huawei announced its involvement in the automotive business, Su Zhen joined Huawei Auto BU as the president and chief architect of the intelligent driving product line, and Su Zhen was dismissed because Huawei's autopilot business was out of the circle and because of the relevant remarks about automatic driving.
At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in July last year, Su Zhen made a surprising statement, he said when talking about the Tesla autopilot accident, when the machine and humans coexist, it will definitely cause the accident rate, and the ugly point is "killing". Subsequently, because of this remark, Huawei also dismissed him from the position of director of the intelligent driving product department and entered the reserve team to receive training and assignment, and Bian Honglin took over Su Zhen as the new director of the intelligent driving product department.
Although Su Zhen's remarks made Huawei's self-driving technology quickly gain everyone's attention, it also caused consumers to worry about autonomous driving technology, which is obviously unfavorable for Huawei's hope to develop the automobile business.
Later, there was news that Su Zhen would join Weilai, but Weilai and Su Zhen himself have denied it, and now, there are different rumors about Su Zhen's departure and whereabouts, some people say that his 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, but some insiders said that after The spread of Su Zhen's remarks, it has had some adverse effects on cooperation between the industry, but no matter what, Su Zhen has begun to be marginalized, which may also be one of the reasons for his departure.
Huawei's choice in building cars
For Huawei, Su Zhen's departure may not be related to the overall situation, but the problem is that in the past year, Huawei's automotive business has left a number of key figures, such as He Liyang, vice president of the automotive business and director of the Western European Enterprise Business Department, Jiang Jun, head of the autonomous driving COO & map and data, Zhang Xiaohong, director of the intelligent driving product project group, Chen Qi, director of the autonomous driving research and development department, and She Xiaoli, chief functional safety expert.
After leaving Huawei, most of these people have gone to new car-making enterprises such as Weilai, Xiaopeng and JiKr, and their departures also indicate some subtle power changes in various business lines within Huawei's autobu.
Some people think that Huawei can't retain talents, but in fact, looking back, Huawei is not unable to retain talents, but the current Huawei concept of building cars is different from some people, just as the so-called different ways are not conspiratorial, and some people leave naturally in normal.
We all know that Huawei's determination to the automobile business is quite large, but at the same time, as of now, Huawei's determination not to build complete vehicles is also quite large.
Previously, Ren Zhengfei issued a resolution on the management of the smart auto parts business, reiterating that Huawei does not build the whole vehicle, and even fiercely indicated who would suggest a car in the future, interfere with the company, and can be transferred away from the post and look for another post.
However, there have always been two different voices inside Huawei for car manufacturing, and these two voices represent different directions for Huawei's internal strategy for the future, is it to continue to implement "Huawei Inside" and stay downstream to become an auxiliary in the era of intelligent electric vehicles? Or do you start building cars upstream and seize a terminal market that is bigger than smartphones?
For Huawei, the risk of building a whole car is also very huge, it is likely to make it unbearable, according to the meaning of the general document, according to the current route, go down first, become a Huawei that helps car companies build a good car, therefore, those who insist on building a whole car have no reason to continue to stay, and it is normal to leave.
As a newcomer to the automotive industry, autonomous driving technology has become a killer for Huawei to enter the automotive industry, which helps it to sell its own car chips and other products, so the importance of the automotive business to Huawei is self-evident.
Huawei has never lacked talents in automobiles, but at present, Huawei's best choice is to do a good job in intelligent driving, and the steady development of the automobile business is the king, and when the time is ripe, Ren Zhengfei will make concessions and join the car-making army.