Wang Kai, the CTO of Li Auto, is said to leave the uprising Chinese auto startup soon, while its co-founder and head engineer Ma Donghui is taking over the former’s projects, a local media outlet reported on February 15th.

Photo credit: Li Auto

Multiple sources close to the matter confirmed that during Li Auto’s January business framework adjustments, Wang Kai’s territories of work, including autonomous driving, computing platform, and the LiOS, were all transferred to Ma Donghui. If the information is accurate, this will mark the highest rank of resignation in the auto startup’s history.  

After the said adjustments, Ma Donghui will act as the “CTO”, responsible for Li Auto’s R&D works, including automobile, electric power, cockpit, intelligent driving, computing platform, electronic and electrical architecture, and the LiOS operating system.

Li Auto responded “no comment” to the report.

Actually, Wang Kai’s time in Li Auto is not that long, as the technology expert joined the company in September 2020. Before Li Auto, Wang Kai worked in the German Tier1 supplier Visteon for eight years and served as its chief global architect and head of the autonomous driving department.

Notably, after Wang joined the company, several production-ready projects such as cockpit software and electronic and electrical architecture were not appointed to him but to Ma Donghui. Wang was reportedly unhappy with the assignment at the time.