Weilai’s senior management team joined another general： once worked in Tucki, taking stock of the technical talents Weilai dug up from Huawei, NVIDIA and Xilinx.
Leifeng. com reported on March 30th that Xin Huang, the former director of Xpeng Motors Autopilot Products, had joined Weilai as vice president, reporting directly to Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of Weilai.
In this regard, Xin Huang in the circle of friends suspected response: "false". It is understood that Xin Huang did join Weilai last year, but the position is senior director, not vice president.
During his tenure as Director of Autopilot Products in Xpeng Motors, Xin Huang promoted the implementation of NGP and memory parking projects in Tucki. In addition, Li Bin attaches great importance to the talents of autonomous driving technology, so Xin Huang’s level in Weilai is 6, after which his level in Tucki was 5. In this regard, Wei Lai also did not comment.
In July last year, it was reported by the media that Xin Huang had sent out six words in his personal circle of friends-"Thanksgiving, Goodbye and Best wishes", and it was suspected that he had left Xpeng Motors at that time.
Among many new car-making forces, Weilai has attracted much attention from the outside world since its establishment. A big reason is that its founders, Li Bin and Li Xiang, were once the bosses of the two largest vertical websites of automobiles in China.
In 2014, Li Binlian, the founder of Easy Car, together with car home Li Xiang, JD.COM and Tencent, invested and created a financing of 1 billion US dollars, and formally established Weilai, with the intention of building Tesla in China.
In the two years after its establishment, Weilai successively recruited a large number of senior executives from traditional car companies, who became the core entrepreneurs of Weilai Company in the early days, enabling Weilai to land in the capital market in just four years and complete the ringing of the bell on the New York Stock Exchange. These people include:
Qin Lihong, co-founder and legal representative of Weilai Automobile
Qin Lihong graduated from Peking University University of International Relations in 1999 with a master’s degree in law. In 2001, he obtained a master’s degree in public policy from Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. In 2005, he joined Anhui Chery Automobile Sales Co., Ltd. as deputy general manager.
Zheng Xiancong, co-founder and executive vice president of Weilai Company.
In 2015, he officially joined Weilai, and together with Li Bin, he built the core team of the company, making contributions to the company in supply chain, industrialization and Weilai-driven technology.
Previously, he served as vice president of Fiat China Global Purchasing Center and general manager of gac fiat, and earlier worked for Ford, with nearly 40 years of experience in the automotive industry.
In August 2019, Zheng Xiancong announced his retirement. After retirement, he will continue to serve as the chairman of Weilai Drive Technology.
Martin Leach, former president and CEO of Weilai Automobile
Martin Leach has been working for Ford motor company for 24 years since 1979; In 2004, he served as CEO of Maserati; In 2006, he served as the president of GAZ Group, a Russian automobile company, in the UK. Since 2008, he has served as the vice chairman of Volvo Construction Equipment Group. In 2015, he joined NEXTEV Weilai as the president of the company.
He is not only a professional manager, but also an avid racing enthusiast. He became a kart driver when he was only 11 years old, and became a professional player at the age of 14. He has made great achievements in the field of karting and racing, and won several championship prizes in Europe.
In 2016, Martin Leach died unfortunately due to illness, at the age of 59.
Huang Chendong, Senior Vice President of Weilaiyuan
Huang Chendong is a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, USA. He used to be the deputy general manager of the new energy division of SAIC. In March 2015, Huang Chendong joined Weilai, and was responsible for the core business of Weilai vehicle development, independent intelligent driving technology research and development, and electric power engineering.
In October 2019, Huang Chendong was promoted to senior vice president of Weilai, reporting to Li Bin. In June 2020, Wei Laiguan announced the news of Huang Chendong’s departure.
Padmasree Warrior, Chief Development Officer of Weilai and CEO of North American Company.
Joined Weilai in 2015, and together with Li Bin, promoted Weilai Automobile to become a competitive member of the global electric vehicle manufacturers. Before joining Weilai Automobile, Warrior was the chief technology officer and strategy officer of Cisco, and also served as the chief technology officer of Motorola. In December 2018, it officially announced its departure from Weilai.
In addition, Weilai Automobile also recruited Lu Xiaoming, the former chairman of Montblanc in China, to take charge of Weilai’s user experience. Zhong Wan Li, executive vice president of Jiangling, is responsible for the specific manufacturing. Ganesh V. Lyer, former chief information officer of Tesla, is the leader of Tesla’s ERP system and is responsible for the operation.
Ping Jiang, former vice president of Guangzhou Automobile Group, Zhou Xin, former executive director of automobile procurement and human resources and government affairs of Qoros, and Mao Jie, former executive director of automobile assembly of Qoros, and other senior executives are responsible for R&D, cost and manufacturing.
It can be said that at the beginning of its establishment, Weilai Automobile began to recruit a large number of senior executives, covering all aspects of automobile manufacturing.
In addition to founding the core figures in the early days, in recent years, Weilai has successively recruited many technical talents from well-known enterprises such as Huawei, NVIDIA, Wal-Mart, Xilinx and Huami.
Ren Shaoqing, co-founder and R&D director of Momenta, an autonomous driving startup.
In August 2020, Ren Shaoqing joined Weilai as assistant vice president, reporting directly to Weilai CEO Li Bin.
Ren Shaoqing graduated from the doctoral program jointly trained by the University of Science and Technology of China and Microsoft Asia Research Institute, and participated in proposing an efficient framework Faster RCNN and an image recognition algorithm ResNet for object detection.
The latter related papers won the Best Paper Award of CVPR, the top conference in the field of computer vision, in 2016.
In 2019, Momenta published an article saying that Ren Shaoqing ranked first in the world in adding academic citations to Google in autonomous driving, and accumulated academic citations ranked second in the world.
In addition, Ren Shaoqing was selected into the list of outstanding young people under the age of 30 in Forbes Asia in 2018.
Zhang Lei, Chief Architect of Yuan Hua Mi Technology
In August 2019, Zhang Lei joined Weilai Automobile as the vice president of software development, succeeding Dr. Li Zhuang.
Judging from the public information, Zhang Lei is a veteran of the automotive technology industry. In 2016, he joined the Huami Technology Silicon Valley team as the chief architect. Before joining Huami, Zhang Lei participated in the development of Android Auto, a car project.
After joining Weilai, Zhang Lei was mainly responsible for Weilai CDC (Car Digital Cockpit) business.
Hu Chengchen, former director of Xilinx Asia-Pacific Laboratory
According to public information, Hu Chengchen received his Ph.D. in computer science and technology in Tsinghua University in 2008, and then taught in Xi ‘an Jiaotong University for a long time. At the age of 29, he became an associate professor at the School of Telecommunications of Xi ‘an Jiaotong University, and later became a professor, and served as the head of the computer department of Xi ‘an Jiaotong University.
Its main research direction is data center, network big data and so on.
Later, in 2017, he was transferred from academia to industry, and served as the director /CTO of Xilinx Asia Pacific Laboratory, with rich experience in chip front-end design.
In October 2021, Hu Chengchen joined Weilai Automobile as the chief expert & assistant vice president and the head of the technical planning department.
Yin Shuijun, former president of Meitu mobile phone
(The picture on the right shows Yin Shuijun)
In February of this year, it was reported that Yin Shuijun, the former president of Meitu Mobile, joined Weilai to take the lead in the mobile phone business.
She Xiaoli, former chief functional safety expert of Huawei BU.
She Xiaoli graduated from Tsinghua University, worked as a functional safety expert in Baidu Autopilot Division for one year, and then worked as the chief functional safety expert and the chief big data application expert in Huawei.
According to public information, She Xiaoli joined Baidu (BIDU) in 2015 after receiving her Ph.D. in Tsinghua as a functional safety expert, and introduced the concept of functional safety into Baidu’s Autopilot Division.
A year later, he joined Huawei as the chief functional safety expert and the chief big data application expert, leading the design of vehicle-side data collection, cloud processing architecture and cloud value-added applications suitable for the characteristics of autonomous driving data.
In November 2021, She Xiaoli joined Weilai Automobile as an internal expert in algorithm research.
Zhang Xiaohong, former director of Huawei BU intelligent driving product project group.
Zhang Xiaohong graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University with a major in mechanical engineering, and has served as a senior software development engineer of Shanghai Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and an OSS product director of Dingqiao Communication Technology Co., Ltd.
In April 2021, he joined Weilai as a senior product manager.
Steve Xie, former head of NVIDIA autopilot simulation.
On January 11th, 2022, Steve Xie, the former head of NVIDIA Autopilot Simulation, said that he had joined Weilai Automobile as the head and senior director of Autopilot Simulation Department of Shanghai Weilai Automobile Co., Ltd.
Steve Xie graduated from Peking University and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Judging from his work experience, Steve Xie had been deeply involved in the autonomous driving industry for many years before joining Weilai Automobile, and had working experience in Cruise, NVIDIA and other big manufacturers.
In 2018, Steve Xie joined Cruise, an American L4 autonomous driving company, responsible for simulation product development.
Alister Whelan, a former Jaguar Land Rover designer, and Joaquin Garcia, a former SEAT designer.
In October 2021, Whelan will become the design director of Weilai together with Garcia.
Alister Whelan had previously served as the interior design director in the design department of Jaguar Land Rover, and his career in Jaguar Land Rover was as long as 21 years, and he participated in the interior design of F-Type, F-Pace, I-Pace and other vehicles. Judging from his qualifications, he obviously has rich design experience.
Joaquin Garcia once worked in Skoda, a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group, for 5 years and in Seat for 6 years, and participated in the design work of Seat and its high-performance brand CUPRA.
Feng Li, Dean of BAIC New Technology Research Institute.
Feng Li comes from a technical background and knows a lot about automobile manufacturing. At the same time, he is also known as a "marketing wizard".
Previously, he worked in Chery Automobile, BAIC Group and other car companies, and has rich practice and successful experience in R&D, marketing, manufacturing and company management.
Since 2009, Feng Li has joined BAIC, successively serving as the executive deputy general manager of Beijing Hyundai, the president of Beijing Automotive Co., Ltd., the Standing Committee of the Party Committee of BAIC and the Party Secretary of the New Technology Research Institute of BAIC.
In December 2017, Feng Li joined Weilai Capital as a partner.
Bai Jian, former hardware director of OPPO and general manager of Xiaomi Chip and Forward-looking Research Department.
In November 2020, Bai Jian joined Weilai Automobile as vice president of hardware, reporting to Li Bin.
Before joining Xiaomi, Bai Jian worked for OPPO as the hardware director. In September 2018, Bai Jian joined Xiaomi Company as the general manager of Xiaomi Chip and Prospective Research Department. Bai Jian studied in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, majoring in cryptography and communication engineering.
Zhu Jiang, former deputy general manager of Lexus China
In February 2017, Zhu Jiang joined Weilai Automobile as the vice president. In November, 2021, Zhu Jiang announced his resignation from Weilai and joined Jidu Automobile, a brand owned by Baidu Car, as the vice president of Jidu Automobile and the person in charge of user development and operation.
In 2002, Zhu Jiang began to set foot in the automobile industry, and then entered BMW Brilliance, responsible for dealer market, event marketing and other related work. In 2008, he was promoted to vice president of brand management of BMW China MINI.
In July 2014, he joined Lexus China as Deputy General Manager, mainly responsible for product planning and marketing.
Xie Dongying, former CFO of New Oriental
Xie Dongying worked in JPMorgan Chase, UBS Assets, UBS Investment Bank and other companies for many years, and then served as CFO of New Oriental Education Group, and once served as chief financial officer.
He is also a director of JD.COM, British education groups Noranda and Yum! China, and has helped many companies to complete the listing.
In May 2017, Weilai announced the appointment of personnel, and announced that Xie Dongying had joined as CFO, responsible for Weilai automobile financing and listing projects, and reported directly to Li Bin.
In October 2019, Xie Dongying left from Weilai.
Ralph kranz, former Volvo executive
In January, 2022, overseas media reported that Ralph Kranz, sales and commercial director of Volvo Germany, resigned on March 1st and joined Weilai Automobile to take charge of the German market.
According to public information, Ralph Kranz has many years’ experience in the automobile industry. Besides 10 years at Volvo, he also worked in aston martin and Toyota.
On the surface, it is wise for Weilai to dig kranz, mainly to promote the plan to enter the German market before the end of 2022.
Shen Feng, former Volvo executive.
In December 2017, the global CTO of Polestar, a high-performance brand owned by Volvo Cars, and Shen Feng, president of China and president of Volvo China R&D Company, announced that they had joined Weilai Automobile as vice president of quality and chairman of quality management committee, and were responsible for its overall quality-related management.
Volvo said that Shen Feng’s previous position in Polestar had been temporarily taken over by Lars Danielson.
Before joining Weilai, Shen Feng was a master of Ford 6-Sigma black belt, global CTO of Volvo Car Polestar and president of China, and president of Volvo China R&D Company.
Shen Feng has rich experience in 6-Sigma quality management, Geely Volvo International M&A, establishment of international R&D center, product R&D and mass production, supplier management, and establishment and commissioning of new factories.