Personnel for Chery's new intelligent R & D is confirmed, and the second-in-command of QianDazhuo has left | Exclusive from 36Kr

On May 30th, Chery Group issued an announcement stating that it would integrate the related businesses of its subsidiaries, Lion Technology, Dazhuo Intelligence, and the R & D General Institute to establish the "Chery Intelligentization Center", which will have business modules such as intelligent cockpit, intelligent assisted driving, and digital architecture.

36Kr Auto learned that after the establishment of the Intelligentization Center, Wu Xuebin will take the lead position, responsible for overall direction - setting of Chery's intelligentization business; Xie Baojun in the second - in - command position will be responsible for actual operations.

Zhang Xiaohong, the former second - in - command of Dazhuo Intelligence, has now left the company. When the Chery Intelligentization Center was just established, Zhang Xiaohong was once rumored to lead the assisted driving R & D work under the intelligentization center system.

36Kr Auto sought verification from Chery Group, but as of press time, there was no response.

Previously, Wu Xuebin was the deputy general manager of Chery Group and the CEO of Lion Technology, a subsidiary of Chery, leading the R & D work of Chery Group's intelligent cockpit.

Xie Baojun is an executive from Geely's ZEEKR system who joined Dazhuo Intelligence last October. He was once the vice - president of ZEEKR, responsible for businesses related to ZEEKR's electronic and electrical architecture.

Zhang Xiaohong, who has left Chery Group, was the former director of the intelligent driving product project group of Huawei's automotive BU. He joined NIO in 2021. Last year, as the head of Chery's autonomous driving technology center, he served as the COO of Dazhuo Intelligence, reporting directly to Chery's R & D General Institute.

Before the integration of Chery Group's intelligentization business, Chery Group had Lion Technology for intelligent cockpit R & D and Dazhuo Intelligence for self - developed assisted driving. In addition, there was a rather large matrix of assisted driving suppliers. This led to repeated R & D investment and sluggish R & D progress.

Therefore, after BYD introduced high - level assisted driving to models priced below 100,000 yuan and Geely Group released the Qianli Haohan architecture, Chery Group also started to make adjustments to its intelligentization business.

Complex Intelligentization Business

Before the establishment of the "Chery Intelligentization Center", Chery Group's intelligentization R & D work was divided among different corporate entities. Since Gao Xinhua, the CTO of Chery Group, had difficulty taking care of both the whole vehicle and intelligentization, Chery's intelligentization R & D lacked overall planning and layout for a long time.

Among them, the R & D work of Chery's intelligent cockpit was led by Lion Technology, a subsidiary established in 2014, and Wu Xuebin was the CEO of Lion Technology.

In the field of assisted driving, on the one hand, Chery established its own assisted driving team, Dazhuo Intelligence; on the other hand, it introduced a large matrix of suppliers.

Dazhuo Intelligence is a subsidiary of Chery established in 2023. Chery Automobile Co., Ltd. holds 60% of the shares of this company, Wuhu Chery Technology Co., Ltd. holds 20%, and the enterprise under the name of Dazhuo Intelligence's CEO, Gu Junli, holds 20%.

In terms of technical route, Dazhuo Intelligence previously announced that it adopted end - to - end technology.

In addition to betting on self - development with Dazhuo, Chery's lineup of assisted driving suppliers is also quite complex.

As of now, Chery's main assisted driving suppliers include Qingzhou Zhihang, Jianzhi Technology, Huawei, Momenta, Bosch + Wenyuan Zhixing, Horizon, and Zhuoyu Technology.

The urban NOA jointly developed by Chery and Qingzhou Zhihang is a key project after the establishment of the Chery Intelligentization Center. Previously, Chery and Luxshare Precision jointly injected 100 million US dollars into Qingzhou Zhihang.

The cooperation between Chery and Qingzhou will be based on the NVIDIA Orin - Y, Horizon J6E, and J6M platforms with a computing power of about 200 TOPS, using Qingzhou Zhihang's algorithms, and jointly created by the former Dazhuo Intelligence team and Qingzhou Zhihang.

Jianzhi Technology will create a high - speed NOA solution for Chery based on the Horizon J6E and J6M platforms. This was the unfinished work of Dazhuo Intelligence.

36Kr Auto learned that Dazhuo Intelligence's last bet was on the mass - production and delivery of high - speed NOA based on the Horizon J6E chip. This solution uses Dazhuo's own obstacle detection technology and SenseTime's lane - line perception technology.

However, one month before the planned mass - production time, the Dazhuo team was integrated, and the unfinished tasks of Dazhuo were handed over to Jianzhi.

According to 36Kr Auto, Chery invested about 500 million yuan in Dazhuo Intelligence. From the perspective of input - output, Dazhuo's results were quite efficient. Therefore, many members of Dazhuo still cannot understand why Chery suddenly decided to integrate Dazhuo.

The cooperation between Huawei and Chery uses Huawei's software and hardware. In addition to the Luxeed models, the models resulting from their cooperation also include those under the Jetour and EXEED Xingjiyuan brands.

The cooperation between Momenta and Chery mainly focuses on high - level intelligent driving. One project is based on the Qualcomm 8620 platform, and high - speed NOA has been installed in vehicles; another project based on the NVIDIA Orin - Y platform is also about to be mass - produced.

The urban NOA solution jointly developed by Bosch and Wenyuan Zhixing, equipped with two NVIDIA Orin - X chips, has been mass - produced in the Xingjiyuan ES and Xingjiyuan ET. In the future, Bosch and Wenyuan Zhixing will also provide assisted driving solutions for Chery's overseas models based on the Orin - Y platform.

Horizon will be the first to mass - produce urban NOA on Chery's models based on its J6p chip and its own algorithms.

As for Zhuoyu Technology, it has not entered the Chery system but is installed on iCAR models.

Such a large matrix of assisted driving suppliers will inevitably drive up costs, and it is also difficult to guarantee the efficiency of assisted driving installation in vehicles.

However, now that Chery has integrated the intelligentization businesses of Lion Technology, Dazhuo Intelligence, and the R & D General Institute into the "Chery Intelligentization Center" and appointed Wu Xuebin and Xie Baojun to lead it, it shows that Chery has realized the drawbacks of a scattered intelligentization R & D team and the lack of unified planning and layout. In the future, it is not ruled out that the Chery Intelligentization Center may streamline the matrix of assisted driving suppliers.

Not Only Chery is Integrating

The integration of Chery's intelligentization business is a microcosm of the integration trend in the automotive industry.

Take another established traditional automaker, Geely Group, for example.

After issuing the "Taizhou Declaration" last year, Geely Group first integrated the ZEEKR and Lynk & Co brands, and this year it is planning to integrate the ZEEKR Technology Group into Geely Group.

At the end of April this year, an announcement on the integration of the ZEEKR and Geely intelligent cockpit teams was released. After the merger, the new intelligent cockpit team will be led by Jiang Jun, the new chief cockpit scientist of Geely Group. However, currently, ZEEKR is still using the ZEEKR AI OS cockpit system, while other brands of Geely Group are all equipped with the Flyme Auto cockpit system.

The integration of the two groups' intelligent driving teams has also begun. 36Kr Auto learned from a Geely insider that the intelligent driving product solutions of the two groups have started to be connected, while their original product solutions were independent of each other.

Another example is BYD.

Last year, BYD carried out a round of integration in the field of assisted driving, integrating the Tianxuan team for high - level assisted driving into the Tianlang team for mid - and low - level solutions. Since this year, BYD has also merged more than 2,000 people from the cockpit department into the Tianlang team.

Since then, Li Feng, the former director of the software center of BYD's Fifth Business Unit, has been responsible for all self - developed software businesses related to BYD's intelligentization; Han Bing, the head of the intelligent driving center of BYD's New Technology Research Institute, manages businesses such as hardware and underlying software.

SAIC Group, a state - owned enterprise like Chery, has also been undergoing intense integration this year.

After Jia Jianxu took office as the new president of SAIC, he not only integrated the businesses of SAIC Passenger Vehicles, SAIC International, the R & D General Institute, and Zero OS Technology into the "Large Passenger Vehicle Sector", but also integrated several parts companies under SAIC's subsidiary, Huayu Automotive Systems Co., Ltd., into a new intelligent chassis company.

Against the backdrop of increasingly fierce competition in the industry, integration is the only way to achieve efficient use of resources, and this is also the logic behind Chery Group's establishment of the Intelligentization Center.

However, the problem is that Chery currently has such a strong lineup of assisted driving suppliers, and Dazhuo Intelligence, the only self - developed assisted driving team of Chery Group, has been integrated. It is still hard to say what impact this will have on the future development of Chery's intelligentization. In this crucial year for Chery's IPO, whether Chery can fulfill its promise of "aggressive Chery intelligentization" may become an important factor influencing Chery's IPO.