Huawei Removes Autopilot Steering Expert Position Because Of Tesla's Autopilot Comments

JAKARTA - Huawei Technologies has ambitions to develop autonomous cars in 2025. However, the company instead announced that it had fired the head of the board of their autonomous steering unit, Su Jing.

The incident began when Su Jing became a speaker at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2021 (WAIC) recently. Jing claims Tesla vehicles can kill people, apparently in reference to recently reported autopilot issues.

"Tesla has had a very high accident rate in recent years, and the types of accidents are very similar from first-person to latest murder. I use the word 'kill' in this place," said Jing.

"It may sound serious to everyone. But think about it, when machines enter human society and human symbiosis, machines will inevitably cause a high rate of accidents. This is ugly. The point is killing, just saying that we want to reduce the chance of the accident as low as possible. In terms of probability, this is is possible," he added.

Citing Gizmochina, Friday July 30, shortly thereafter, the China-based tech giant then issued an official statement that Jing had been removed for the inappropriate comments at the WAIC 2021 event.

"Su Jing was removed from the position of director of the intelligent driving product department. Su Jing will enter the reserve team for training and distribution. Sources revealed that the appointment and removal document was signed and approved by Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei," Huawei said.

It is known that during his years at Huawei, Jing has outstanding capabilities in autonomous technology and has always earned good staff ratings. Previously he served as chief architect of Huawei Terminal Company, he was the head of Huawei's smart steering product department.

Huawei trusted Jing to lead the creation of the ADS autonomous driving system solution, which was first showcased at the BAIC Arcfox Alpha S. This is the first smart electric car equipped with Huawei's Lidar solution and the first model to be embedded with Huawei HarmonyOS.

Some have speculated that Jing's dismissal may have been for reasons other than comments about Tesla. Previously, there were rumors that Weilai (NIO) and other car manufacturers had approached Su Jing and wanted to snatch her from Huawei.

However, both Jing and NIO denied the rumors. While Huawei didn't actually kick him out of the company, the autonomous driving expert is likely to flap his career wings soon elsewhere.