After Chery reorganized its 2,500 - person intelligentization team, Shang Jin, the CTO of Kaiyang Laboratory, will leave the company.

Kaiyang Laboratory is the most innovative, forward - looking, and also the furthest from commercialization among all of Chery's technology R & D entities. Yin Tongyue, the chairman of Chery, once admitted that Kaiyang Laboratory copied Huawei's 2012 Laboratory. The goal is to integrate innovative technologies into the automotive industry and "be able to hold others back in the future."

However, different from Huawei, which has a technology - company gene, Chery, with a manufacturing - industry gene, still needs to continuously explore and build a method for an innovative technology R & D system.

Many of Chery's layouts in cutting - edge R & D such as intelligentization are being reorganized.

Auto Pixel has learned that Chery's Intelligentization Center has completed the integration of Xiongshi, Dazhuo, etc., forming an R & D team of nearly 2,500 people. The new Intelligentization Center has five departments, including the Intelligent Cockpit Center, the Intelligent Driving Center, the Digital Architecture Center, the Chip Research Institute, and the Strategy and Operations Management Department.

Under the major organizational changes, the changes of senior executives in Chery's R & D system are quite frequent. Auto Pixel exclusively revealed in a previous article that the new Intelligentization Center is led by Wu Xuebin, the deputy general manager of Chery, who once also served as the CEO of Xiongshi Technology and was in charge of Chery's intelligent cockpit R & D. Dazhuo Intelligence is responsible for Chery's intelligent driving R & D. Two senior executives, Gu Junli and Zhang Xiaohong, have left one after another. Among them, Gu Junli, who held a higher position, also had the title of deputy general manager at Chery.

The changes continue. Auto Pixel has exclusively learned that Shang Jin, the assistant president of Chery Automobile Co., Ltd. and the CTO of Kaiyang Laboratory, will leave.

Shang Jin has worked at Chery Automobile for a relatively short time. The automotive industry is more familiar with his previous position as the CEO of Guoqi Zhikong. In October last year, Chery unveiled the "Kaiyang Laboratory" at the 2024 Global Innovation Conference. In the first quarter of this year, Shang Jin began to visit various universities as the CTO of Kaiyang Laboratory.

The research directions of Kaiyang Laboratory are relatively complex. The most important one is to start from the vehicle - end global AI, including the Chery basic large model, Chery AI OS, etc., and ultimately cover multiple application scenarios such as intelligent cockpits, high - level assisted driving, intelligent chassis, and driving power. In addition, it will also focus on multiple innovative fields such as solid - state batteries and chips.

In Chery's technology R & D layout, Kaiyang Laboratory is the youngest, with the most forward - looking positioning and the furthest from commercialization. It focuses on innovative industrial technologies from scratch, and many of them may take 5 to 10 years to be commercialized. Shang Jin is the actual leader of this laboratory.

Regarding why Kaiyang Laboratory was established, Yin Tongyue of Chery Automobile Co., Ltd. once explained that the direct reason was inspired by Huawei, copying Huawei's "2012 Laboratory."

Huawei established the "2012 Laboratory" 14 years ago as an engine to explore cutting - edge technologies such as communication, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. The inspiration for the laboratory's name came from the founder Ren Zhengfei's concept after watching the movie "2012" to build a "Noah's Ark" for future technologies to deal with the challenges of the "digital flood." Now, the 2012 Laboratory is a large - scale and sophisticated global R & D network, with 16 research institutes globally. Many of Huawei's subsequent technological breakthroughs in various application fields can often be traced back to the early preparations of the 2012 Laboratory.

This is also Chery's dream, to achieve innovation through forward - looking organizational layouts and make the company more digital. Shang Jin has expressed on different occasions that the progress of artificial intelligence has not impacted consumer electronics such as computers and mobile phones because these industries have completed digital transformation and can smoothly graft AI technology. Only the automotive industry has been impacted. He believes the reason is that most automotive companies have not achieved digital transformation.

Rather than waiting for passive changes, Chery hopes to actively layout innovative technologies and ultimately "hold others back" in future competition.

But this takes time. Chery, with a large - scale manufacturing background, has a mature layout in engineering technology innovation. In digital technology innovation, most of the layouts have been re - established in the past two years.

In September 2022, Chery announced the "Yaoguang 2025" plan, announcing that it plans to invest 100 billion in R & D in the next five years, train 20,000 R & D talents, and establish 300 Yaoguang Laboratories to support interdisciplinary and cross - border technology research. At the end of 2022, Chery established the Yaoguang Laboratory, in 2023 it established Dazhuo, and at the end of last year, it established Kaiyang Laboratory.

In the automotive industry, there are many ways to build digitalization. Chery is not the only one that has realized the shortcomings of the automotive - company system. Geely has chosen to invest in external mature companies led by its chairman Li Shufu outside the system, such as Meizu and Jieyue Xingchen. After they become mature, they are incorporated into Geely's system, helping Geely build Ecarx, Xingrui Intelligent Computing Center, Qianli Technology, etc.

Currently, Chery seems to be more inclined to find talents from the outside and incorporate them into internal entrepreneurship at Chery. But this will put more tests on the personal ability of the leader. In addition to technical skills, whether one can handle internal relationships well and get full authorization are all factors that affect success or failure.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Auto Pixel". Author: Xing Ruifang. Republished by 36Kr with permission.