Recently, within the Geely Group system, there was a senior management adjustment in the intelligent cockpit business. Du Ping, Executive Vice President of ECARX, and Xia Huan, Deputy Director of the Geely Automobile Central Research Institute, swapped positions, with Du Ping moving to the Geely Research Institute and Xia Huan joining ECARX. According to SunTzu Recruit, a Chinese recruitment agency, the adjustments to Geely’s intelligent cockpit business have not yet been finalized.
According to a previous report by SunTzu Recruit, a Chinese headhunting company, Du Ping is one of the heads of the cockpit business at ECARX. He joined ECARX in 2020 and was responsible for the intelligent vehicle product development and delivery division. He is also one of the earliest practitioners in the Internet of Vehicles industry, having joined the IoV company Botai in 2010, where he was a colleague of Shen Ziyu, and he also worked at the automotive electronics company Guanghong Technology. In 2016, Li Shufu and Shen Ziyu, who was then the vice president of Geely Research Institute, founded ECARX, and Du Ping joined. Currently, Du Ping is no longer listed on the management team on ECARX’s official website. ECARX is a supplier of automotive intelligence, with products including intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit computing platforms, and software platforms. However, since the second half of 2022, it has been gradually divesting its intelligent driving businesses such as autonomous driving map positioning, navigation, and driving services, focusing on cockpit products.
Li Shufu, the chairman of Geely Group, is one of the shareholders. As of the end of 2023, Li Shufu and his family hold over 50% of the shares, while chairman Shen Ziyu holds 7.2%. The Geely system is an important source of revenue for ECARX.
In March 2024, Shen Ziyu stated that the revenue ratio of Geely and non-Geely systems is approximately 7:3. In the cockpit business, ECARX mainly focuses on the underlying computing platform, while Xingji Meizu provides the software system. Xingji Meizu was established after Geely Group acquired 79.09% of Meizu Technology, with Shen Ziyu serving as the first CEO, stepping down in May 2024.
In the supply team for the smart cockpit solution, Geely’s various brands currently have multiple options: one is the collaboration between ECARX and Xingji Meizu, where the former provides the computing platform and the latter offers the vehicle networking system Flyme Auto, combining into a complete software and hardware system. This solution is applied to models such as the Galaxy E5, Lynk & Co 08, and Lynk & Co 07.
The second option is the cockpit system developed by Geely Research Institute and the brand’s own research. The Geely Central Research Institute serves as Geely’s internal “technology platform,” where they explore and conduct preliminary research on supply chain innovation projects and cutting-edge technologies, while also providing capabilities to Geely’s brands such as Volvo, Lotus, and Polestar. The director is Li Chuanhai, Vice President of Geely Group.
Xia Huan serves as the vice president of the Geely Research Institute and concurrently holds the position of director of the Intelligent Cockpit and Cloud Platform Center, being responsible for the intelligent cockpit. He previously led the development of the intelligent cockpit system LYNK OS N for the Lynk & Co models.
However, in March 2023, the Flyme Auto system—an intelligent cockpit solution developed in collaboration between ECARX and Meizu—also began to be integrated into Lynk & Co models. Xia Huan stated to the media at that time that LYNK OS N and Flyme Auto come from two different teams, and the current goal is to achieve a 1+1>2 effect, with the future direction aimed at integration to achieve 1+1=1.
Currently, both systems are being updated. However, one system comes from an internal organization of Geely Automobile, while the other comes from Li Shufu and his family’s holding company. After the two executives from Geely Research Institute and ECARX were swapped, there are still challenges in how the two teams will cooperate and integrate.
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