Li Xiang takes direct charge of human resources, and Huawei-affiliated executives fade out of Li Auto's management | Exclusive from 36Kr

Text by | Xiao Man

Edited by | Li Qin

36Kr Auto has exclusively learned that Li Auto has issued an internal announcement, announcing multiple organizational and personnel adjustments. The adjustment details include:

• The first - level organizations "Organization Department" and "Human Resources" under the Organization and Finance Group are integrated into "Human Resources" and incorporated into the Product and Strategy Group;
• The Organization and Finance Group is renamed the CFO Functional Group;
• Yang Haishan is appointed as the head of Human Resources, reporting to Li Xiang, the CEO of Li Auto.

Yang Haishan is a veteran employee of Li Auto. Since October 2016, he has served as the head of after - sales at Li Auto, comprehensively responsible for the system construction of after - sales services. Previously, he worked at Applied Materials China, Brilliance BMW and other companies.

36Kr Auto has learned that previously, the head of human resources reported to Li Tie, the CFO of Li Auto. After the adjustment, the head reports directly to Li Xiang. This means that Li Xiang will personally manage the company's organizational structure and personnel adjustments.

36Kr Auto has learned that before the adjustment of the reporting object, the personnel head of Li Auto had been adjusted once. The original first - level head was Li Wenzhi, who had the same status as Yuan Chunfeng, equivalent to the HR business head.

As of the time of publication, Li Wenzhi and Yuan Chunfeng are still in the CFO Functional Group, both in the Organization and Quality Operations Department. This department only has two people: Li Wenzhi is the head, and Yuan Chunfeng is the administrator and also serves as the HRBP, serving the intelligent vehicle strategy and AI leadership strategy. According to internal sources, before this, the authorities of Li Wenzhi and Yuan Chunfeng had been weakened.

When Li Wenzhi joined Li Auto in 2023, his position was the head of the CFO Office, mainly responsible for process, organization, and financial transformation work. This veteran, who had 18 years of work experience at Huawei, was one of the important links for Li Auto to learn from Huawei.

At that time, in order to quickly make up for the shortcomings in process, sales, chips, and intelligence, Li Auto recruited talents from Huawei. Zou Liangjun, who had worked at Huawei Honor for 22 years, was brought in to take over the sales and service system, and Li Wenzhi, the former head of Huawei's Global HRBP Management Department, was responsible for process and financial transformation.

After Li Wenzhi joined Li Auto, he upgraded the original OKR management method to the PBC performance model (Personal Business Commitment performance model, which emphasizes result commitment and forced ranking). However, since last year, this model has shown adverse effects at Li Auto. The sales team engaged in vicious competition to meet the targets, resulting in chaos such as cross - regional order grabbing and internal rebates. The pure - electric vehicle models also misjudged the market due to "over - focusing on sales competition".

In July this year, Li Auto announced that it would abandon the Huawei PBC model and resume using the OKR model. Li Auto began to "de - Huaweiize", and the subsequent personnel adjustments were inevitable. Also in July, Zou Liangjun stepped down from his management position.

Currently, Li Xiang also directly manages teams related to the automotive business, such as product lines, product departments, brand, and strategy. However, Li Xiang has previously stated that he will devote more energy to the AI (Artificial Intelligence) field. He participates in four to five AI meetings every week and has set up a weekly AI regular meeting.

Although Li Xiang has publicly stated multiple times that Li Auto aims to become a globally leading artificial intelligence company in the future, currently, Li Auto's AI business investment is mainly in areas such as the auxiliary driving VLA (Vision - Language - Action) large - scale model. Moreover, Li Auto has lost several AI experts this year, including Xia Zhongpu, who was responsible for the implementation of AI algorithms, and Jia Peng, who was in charge of the technical research and development of VLA. It is reported that after leaving Li Auto, Jia Peng turned to entrepreneurship in embodied intelligence and founded Zhijian Dynamics in Hangzhou.

Company operation may be a more important matter at this stage. Since the beginning of this year, Li Auto's delivery volume has been surpassed by NIO and XPeng. After the release of the pure - electric models i8 and i6, Li Auto's monthly delivery volume is around 30,000, while XPeng and NIO have exceeded 40,000. The monthly delivery of "Affordable Li Auto" Leapmotor has even climbed to over 70,000.

The capital market has already responded. Li Auto's stock price has fallen by about 20% since the beginning of the year, while NIO, which is still struggling on the verge of survival, has risen by 49.78%.

It is important to remain rational in adversity and balance short - term cost - reduction and efficiency - improvement measures with necessary long - term investments. Currently, Li Auto needs to find more effective ways to stabilize its business and boost the morale of its employees.

Li Auto once ranked first among new car - making forces with the success of its range - extended models. However, after the failure of the MEGA model last year, Li Auto quickly adjusted, lowering its sales target and laying off employees. This shows the strong organizational execution ability of Li Auto. But from an external perspective, choosing large - scale layoffs while still having considerable cash flow may have been an over - reaction to the MEGA failure.

Now that the management authority of HR has returned to Li Xiang's hands, Li Auto's once - aggressive personnel management method may change.