Xpeng, a prominent Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, is undergoing significant changes in its smart driving team, with key personnel changes and organizational restructuring, according to reports from local media outlet 36kr.
The latest departure from Xpeng’s smart driving team is Lin Yishu, the North American head, who has been replaced by another senior member, Junyao. Lin, who joined Xpeng in 2019 and was recruited by the former vice president of autonomous driving Wu Xinzhou, left the company as part of the ongoing reshuffle. Wu had departed Xpeng last August to join Nvidia.
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The departures also include Zhang Pengyue, the head of the perception module static team, who joined Xpeng in 2019. Among the core members recruited by Wu, only Li Liyun remains with Xpeng, the report stated.
In contrast, Xpeng has welcomed new talent, including Liu Xianming, a former senior engineer at GM’s self-driving unit Cruise, who joined as the head of the AI team. Additionally, several engineers from Cruise and Waymo have joined Xpeng, along with Candice Yuan, formerly head of operations at Alibaba’s Damo Academy autonomous driving lab, who joined as senior director of autonomous driving products.
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In response to these changes, Xpeng has reorganized its smart driving team’s organizational structure, setting up an AI department under its smart driving division to focus on advancing technologies, including end-to-end systems. End-to-end technology, which takes sensor data as input and uses it directly for vehicle control commands, is becoming an industry consensus following Tesla’s release of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) V12 earlier this year.
Xpeng announced in May that it had achieved the use of end-to-end technology, with its urban NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot) covering more than 300 cities and expected to cover the entire country by the third quarter of this year.
He Xiaopeng, Xpeng’s chairman and CEO, recently visited the US and tested Tesla’s FSD system, according to a Weibo post by Mr. He.
