Xiaomi’s electric vehicle unit seeks to accelerate its smart driving efforts as it hires an industry veteran. According to CnEVPost, Xiaomi EV hired the former Chief Technology Officer of TuSimple, a Chinese autonomous driving tech company.
Ex-TuSimple CTO joins Xiaomi EV to lead autonomous driving efforts
Former TuSimple CTO Wang Naiyan will report to Xiaomi’s Technical Committee Chairman and Xiaomi EV’s Autonomous Driving Chief Ye Hangjun to join the company’s smart driving tech development.
In hindsight, Wang led TuSimple China’s Research & Development and management. He also supervised the L2-assisted driving and L4 autonomous driving solutions development. Moreover, he is the core developer of the deep learning open-source framework MXNet.
More impressively, Wang has reportedly published over 40 papers in leading computer vision and machine learning conferences and journals.
All these said, Wang’s addition to Xiaomi EV can significantly accelerate its R&D of smart driving technology.
Commitment to becoming a major player in smart EVs
While Xiaomi EV achieves new heights in sales and manufacturing, Chief Executive Lei Jun’s focus has apparently started to pivot to smart driving technology.
On Saturday, CEO Lei drove a Xiaomi SU7 Pro in a live video broadcast. He showed off the electric sedan’s smart driving capabilities on both highways and in urban areas. He also emphasized his ambition to have smart driving talent join Xiaomi.
Before that, CEO Lei discussed the company’s interest in smart driving capabilities on Weibo on March 26. He reiterated his goal for the company to advance as one of the biggest players in the smart driving space within the year.
“Smart driving, is the key battleground for smart electric vehicles.”
Lei Jun, Xiaomi founder, chairman, and CEO
Xiaomi’s smart driving initiative progress
According to the report, Xiaomi has allocated significant investments in its smart driving endeavor.
In fact, its Research & Development team now has more than 1,000 employees. It has the potential to exceed 1,500 employees by the end of 2024.
The R&D team has access to special test vehicles, with road testing already surpassing 10 million kilometers.
Notably, Xiaomi has only launched its inaugural offering, the SU7, on March 28. It comes with three variants, including the standard, Pro, and Max. The electric sedan enjoyed early success in its home market due to the strong customer demand. Now, it aims to deliver a total of 100,000 units in 2024.
