According to 36Kr Automobile reports,Feimo Zhixing, an assisted driving company incubated by Great Wall Motors, is experiencing high-level personnel turmoil. A number of middle and senior managers have recently resigned.According to people familiar with the matter, Chairman Zhang Kai has proposed to resign, and his whereabouts are unknown; Vice President of Technology Ai Rui, Vice President of Product Cai Na and other senior executives also left the company in April this year.
It is understood that Haomo Zhixing was established in 2019 and was independently incubated by the assisted driving forward-looking division of Great Wall Motors Technology Center. From the perspective of equity control, the current major shareholder of Great Wall Motors is Baoding Great Wall Holding Group. Haomo Zhixing's core business focuses on two areas: passenger vehicle assisted driving and low-speed driverless driving in terminal logistics.
However, some employees said that the commercialization of the company's two main businesses has made little progress. In the passenger car assisted driving business,Hao Mo Zhixing only has two models of Hyundai cars, mainly providing functions such as memory driving and parking.It is scheduled to be delivered in August this year, but "the progress of functional development is slow and there are doubts whether it can be delivered as scheduled."
"The sales target for low-speed autonomous vehicles this year is only more than 50 units. The company neither develops new models nor plans to expand sales. It is basically in a state of clearing inventory."
Commercialization is not progressing smoothly,In the future, it may face the same fate as Chery's assisted driving subsidiary Dazhuo Intelligence being merged into the group's research institute.
Haomo Zhixing is the main supplier of smart driving solutions for Great Wall Motors' models. The company will undertake the development of high-level assisted driving for Great Wall Motors' 34 models to be launched in 2022, accounting for nearly 80% of Great Wall Motors' models to be launched throughout the year.
But Great Wall has not put its eggs in one basket. Last year, Yuanrong Qixing’s “end-to-end” solution was implemented on many models such as the Great Wall Wei brand Blue Mountain, and Great Wall also invested US$100 million in Yuanrong Qixing to lead the Series C financing.
In addition, Great Wall has also invested a lot of resources internally to build an intelligent system. According to public information, the size of Great Wall's intelligent R&D team has exceeded 5,000 people, of which software developers account for 70%. Great Wall's high-end brand Wei Pai has also established an independent intelligent research and development platform, including more than 600 top technical experts.
Taken together, Haimou is a relatively independent assisted driving business branch of Great Wall Motors.The turmoil has not had a significant impact on Great Wall Motors' overall assisted driving layout.
