Chen Yilun, CTO of Huawei's autonomous driving system, has become the latest autonomous driving executive to leave the tech giant after Su Jing.

(Image credit: CnEVPost)

Chen Yilun, CTO of Huawei's autonomous driving system and chief scientist of its automotive business unit, has left the company, becoming another autonomous driving executive to leave the tech giant after Su Jing.

Chen, who joined Huawei in 2018 and was in charge of perception technology, has left the company recently, local tech media outlet LatePost said in a report on Tuesday.

Before joining Huawei, Chen worked as a technologist and project manager at Eaton Corporation, a smart power management company, and joined DJI as a lead engineer in 2017.

In Wednesday's report, tech media outlet AI4Auto said Chen joined the Institute for AI Industry Research, Tsinghua University as a lead expert in the direction of intelligent robotics.

Chen led the development of Huawei's first-generation autonomous driving system from scratch, and its departure from Huawei has a big potential impact on the landscape of autonomous driving in China, the report noted.

He joined Huawei just as the tech giant was beginning to push forward with its partnerships with car companies.

In November 2018, Huawei signed a partnership agreement with BAIC BJEV. In May 2019, Huawei established an automotive business unit. In October 2020, Huawei unveiled its smart car solution "Huawei Inside".

BAIC BluePark, BAIC's NEV brand, became the first car company to use Huawei's smart car solution when it announced the Arcfox α-S model with "Huawei Inside" a year ago.

On May 7, BAIC and Huawei announced the launch of the Arcfox α-S with "Huawei Inside", making it the first mass-produced car to feature Huawei's full-stack smart car solution and Huawei's smart cockpit.

Huawei is now strongly supporting the AITO brand, which it has jointly built with Chongqing Sokon's Seres brand, and has already released two models with extended-range technology - the AITO M5 and AITO M7.

In the midst of Huawei's fast-growing automotive business as well as rapid changes, its executive team has been adjusted more frequently.

At the end of January this year, Tencent Auto cited sources familiar with the matter as saying that Su Jing, who had held the position of Huawei's head of smart driving products, would be leaving and that his new destination was unknown for the time being.

Huawei later confirmed that Su had left Huawei's automotive division and thanked him for his contributions to the division.

Prior to Su, Chen Qi, head of Huawei's self-driving R&D department, joined Zeekr and was responsible for the development of smart driving technology, according to multiple media reports in early November last year.