Former TuSimple CTO, Wang Naiyan, to Join Xiaomi’s Autonomous Driving Division

According to Chinese media 36Kr, Wang Naiyan, the former CTO of TuSimple China, will join Xiaomi Auto and report to Ye Hangjun, Chairman of the Xiaomi Technical Committee and head of Xiaomi Auto’s autonomous driving.

Previously, Wang Naiyan led the R&D and management work at TuSimple China, and was responsible for the development and implementation of L2-level assisted driving and L4-level autonomous driving solutions. Even earlier, Dr. Wang Naiyan graduated from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, excelling in deep learning. He is a core developer of the deep learning open-source framework MXNet, and has published over 40 papers in top conferences and journals in computer vision and machine learning.

Wang Naiyan’s addition is a symbolic signal of Xiaomi‘s accelerated smart driving technology. A TuSimple R&D staff member told 36Kr Auto that Wang Naiyan has a comprehensive understanding of the entire chain of intelligent driving, including perception and planning control. He also has unique insights into the currently popular end-to-end technology solutions.

“End-to-end” is a concept in deep learning, indicating that the AI model can output the final result just by inputting raw data.

Tesla has led the trend in end-to-end intelligent driving. Elon Musk stated that its FSD Beta v12 (fully self-driving software) can input images and output vehicle control signals such as steering, braking, and acceleration.

Wang Naiyan has publicly called not to fall into a narrow understanding of Tesla’s “end-to-end.” He believes that end-to-end is one of the more promising technical routes to solve high-level autonomous driving problems, but there are still many issues to be resolved in implementing the solution, and Tesla’s solution does not represent the correct answer.

He believes that the focus of end-to-end is the lossless transmission of information, and insisting on fixing the input and output points of the signal will only bring unnecessary burden to the system.

Wang Naiyan, who has independent thinking about technology and the market, may bring the possibility of overtaking on a curve to Xiaomi‘s intelligent driving.

Previously, Lei Jun publicly stated that 43 days after the start of delivery, the delivery volume of Xiaomi SU7 has exceeded 10,000 units, and its annual production capacity has also increased to 100,000 units. It took XPeng and Li Auto seven months to reach this delivery volume, and Weltmeister took 87 days.

Xiaomi‘s achievements in sales and vehicle manufacturing have broken records, and Lei Jun’s work focus has begun to shift to intelligent driving.

On May 18, Lei Jun drove the Xiaomi SU7 Pro version for the first live show of high-speed and city NOA (Intelligent Navigation Assisted Driving). In the live broadcast, Lei Jun debunked rumors that Xiaomi will cooperate with third parties on visual solutions and reiterated Xiaomi‘s determination to develop intelligent driving independently.

Lei Jun called for recruitment twice during the live broadcast, publicly asking if there were any intelligent driving experts willing to join Xiaomi.

At present, Xiaomi‘s investment in intelligent driving has exceeded 4.7 billion yuan, the team size has exceeded 1,000 people, and its test mileage has also exceeded 10 million kilometers. The city NOA function will also be gradually pushed to users in 10 cities in May.

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