Beijing (ZXZC)- Li Shufu, founder and chairman of China’s major auto group Geely, is reported to set foot in the smartphone industry, according to Caijing.com, a local media outlet.

Li Shufu; photo credit: Geely Holdings

The auto mogul’s phone-making project is carrying out rapidly. Sources disclosed that Li Shufu has already been seeking talents in the industry and siting office locations in Wuhan, Shanghai, and even overseas.  

In fact, the smartphone, as a crucial terminal for people’s daily life, is taken as the best tool for auto and tech companies to reach consumers directly.

With the unstoppable intellectualization development, vehicles will no longer be just a transportation device, but a mobile living space in people’s lives that focuses on the experience, the interaction, and the technology.  

For example, Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of tech giant Baidu, once said an ideal car functions as a robot instead of a driving machine, and “it will be the future orientation of vehicle evolution”.

Geely has long been laying out the field of intelligent vehicles. Li Shufu co-founded ECARX in 2016 for intelligent cockpit development with an aim to “shape the future bond between people and cars” by connecting vehicles with smartphones, allowing mutual recognition and data sharing via the cloud.

In the meantime, Geely attempted to lower the threshold of owning an intelligent vehicle using smartphones as means of outside computing power support, projecting to vehicles. In August, ECARX’s newest generation of its Galaxy OS was implemented onto Geely’s Xingyue L model.