Geely Intelligent Driving Integration Progress: Zeekr Group Takes the Lead, Megvii Group Compromises
In early August, it was reported that Geely had begun the integration of its intelligent driving capabilities. The three major teams, Geely Research Institute, Zeekr Intelligent Driving Team, and Maichi Intelligent Driving, were merged into a joint venture, Chongqing Qianli Intelligent Driving, with an expected size of 3,000 people. Wang Jun, co-president of Qianli Technology, will serve as CEO of Qianli Intelligent Driving, and Chen Qi, former vice president of Zeekr Intelligent Driving, will serve as co-CEO. Recently, multiple sources have learned that the integration has made substantial progress: on September 8th, in Ningbo Hangzhou Bay, the main middle and senior management of Qianli Intelligent Driving participated in the first organizational structure briefing after the merger. The meeting introduced the organizational plan chart after the current team integration. Judging from the newly formed organizational structure plan chart, Qianli Intelligent Driving's internal R&D department adopts a matrix management structure. In addition to vertical functional departments such as system development, platform development, algorithm development, and data development, three new horizontal departments have been added: the CTO Management Office, the Pre-research Product Line, and the Project Management Office. They are headed by CTO Yang Mu, Chief Scientist Yuan Pingyi, and Chen Qi's former subordinate at Zeekr, Chen Baocheng. In this merger and adjustment, the Zeekr group will take on the heavier workload of mass production projects, while the Megvii group will focus more on pre-research for the intelligent driving model. "The organizational structure was basically based on the Zeekr group's ideas, and Megvii made some compromises," said an insider close to Qianli Intelligent Driving's senior management. This compromise is reflected in the fact that the merged structure largely follows the previous organizational structure within the Zeekr Intelligent Driving team. Sources familiar with the matter told us that on the same day the organizational structure was formed, the Zeekr team transferred over 100 people with engineering delivery backgrounds from the Mai Chi team to the Zeekr team, with the goal of delivering the intelligent driving version in the fourth quarter.