Chery executives asserted that domestic smart driving lags behind Tesla, and Musk probably covered his face in shame

A bolt from the blue, Tesla FSD is coming to China!

This is the inner thought of many people in the domestic automotive industry during this period. Even Musk himself has not given a clear timetable for the introduction of the FSD system in China, but some people in China have already imagined a big drama.

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference held recently, Gu Junli, deputy general manager of Chery Automobile and CEO of Dazhuo Intelligent, publicly called Tesla "the world's first benchmark in the field of intelligent driving." She also said that the research and development progress gap between domestic manufacturers and Tesla in the field of intelligent driving is 1.5-2 years.

Gu Junli's argument is that Tesla has sales volume as a foundation.

I don’t know what Musk himself would think after hearing what Gu Junli said, but if the omnipotent netizens were asked to put themselves in his shoes, Musk would probably cover his face in shame and reply, “You’re flattering me very well. Don’t flatter me more next time.”

As early as January 2024, Musk publicly stated that unless Western countries establish trade barriers, Chinese new energy vehicle manufacturers will destroy all automobile manufacturers.

In June 2024, China's new energy vehicle market share in the world has exceeded 60%, and is still growing at a rate of more than 30%. As a new energy vehicle practitioner, Musk obviously understands the strength of Chinese manufacturers better than Gu Junli.

In terms of smart driving, Tesla does have certain advantages, but if you say that it is 1.5-2 years ahead of Chinese manufacturers, I'm afraid Musk himself would shake his head in helplessness.

So far, Chinese consumers have not seen the real FSD system because it has never been commercially used in China. Gu Junli has been working hard in the Chinese market, but she boldly touted the FSD, which is really incredible.

Just like some people touted Google's driverless cars, saying they were some kind of high-tech, when China's own driverless taxis were put to commercial use on the streets, they began to worry about whether Didi drivers would lose their jobs.

So, what do people who have experienced the FSD system think of it? He Xiaopeng just went to the United States to experience it some time ago and concluded that it is relatively smooth and performs well, but whether it can adapt to China's road conditions, which are far more complex than those in the United States, remains to be seen.

He Xiaopeng's words pointed out a key issue: the intelligent driving system must be combined with the actual local road conditions.

All intelligent driving systems are built on local data, and the so-called big models are also trained and iterated based on local data. Tesla's FSD system currently has almost zero data accumulated in China. How did Gu Junli come to the conclusion that it is "1.5-2 years ahead of China"?

Gu Junli called on Chinese manufacturers to learn from Tesla, but Chinese manufacturers did not seem to buy it.

Tesla's FSD system is a purely visual route that relies on high-definition cameras and algorithms to achieve intelligent driving. This route has no shortage of followers, but more Chinese manufacturers have long surpassed this boring route dispute. They adopt a pragmatic attitude and increasingly adopt "fusion perception" solutions instead of "learning" from Tesla.

The reason is obvious. The reputation, popularity, and smart driving mileage of Chinese manufacturers are rapidly improving. According to normal business logic, they will only develop intelligent driving systems based on China's actual situation. It is impossible for them to follow Tesla's FSD just by watching a few videos.

At least so far, the performance of domestic new energy manufacturers in the field of intelligent driving can still meet user needs. Huawei and Seres can create a monthly sales volume of more than 40,000 units, and Huawei's ADS2.0 advanced intelligent driving assistance system plays a key role.

Gu Junli said that Tesla's FSD system is leading, and there is another argument, that is, Tesla has huge sales as a foundation.

You don't even need to use professional knowledge to refute this view by tapping your toes on the keyboard.

Does intelligent driving mean it is ahead based on sales volume? Toyota and Volkswagen are the first to express their disbelief!

Moreover, are Tesla's sales really that scary? In 2023, Tesla's global sales will be 1.8 million vehicles, while BYD's sales will be 3 million vehicles, a gap of more than 1 million vehicles between the two. This year, the gap may widen to 1.5 million vehicles.

Gu Junli's statement lacks basic logic and ignores basic facts.

In fact, anyone with a little common sense in the industry would not agree with Gu Junli's point of view; the problem is, she has been in the field of intelligent driving for so many years and is considered a prominent figure, so why does she behave like a layman on professional issues?

First of all, her “seniority” may not be that valuable.

Let’s first take a look at Gu Junli’s resume to see how she got this seniority.

Gu Junli graduated from Hefei University of Technology with a bachelor's degree. Of course, she is quite sensitive about this not-so-famous alma mater and has never mentioned it in public. So on Gu Junli's LinkedIn account, she resolutely lists Tsinghua University, where she studied for her doctorate, as her alma mater.

She joined AMD in 2012, joined Tesla in February 2016, and was laid off in October 2017. She worked at Tesla for less than two years in total. At that time, Tesla was not yet known for its autonomous driving.

After being laid off by Tesla, Gu Junli turned around and joined Xiaopeng, where she became the vice president of the autonomous driving R&D department. Less than a year later, at the end of 2018, Wu Xinzhou joined Xiaopeng, also responsible for the autonomous driving team, and became Gu Junli's superior.

In March 2020, Gu Junli resigned from Xiaopeng

Interestingly, during Gu Junli's tenure, the performance of autonomous driving business of both Tesla and Xpeng was relatively average. Xpeng Motors' intelligent driving became truly famous only after the launch of Xpeng P5 in 2021.

In February 2023, Gu Junli, who had disappeared for three years, went to Hefei, where Chery is located, a place she had worked for four years but never mentioned, to serve as the general manager of Dazhuo Intelligent, a new company incubated by Chery that focuses on autonomous driving technology.

How was her performance at Chery?

In October 2023, Chery Automobile held Chery Technology DAY and officially released the Yaoguang 2025 strategy, which included the Dazhuo Intelligent Driving led by Gu Junli. This system is known as the "full-station autonomous driving solution" and includes various components such as highway navigation, city navigation, central computing platform HPC, road-cloud collaboration, end-to-end AI, and full-scenario intelligent driving.

Up to now, Gu Junli has joined Chery for one and a half years. What impression has Dazhuo Intelligent Driving left on people? No, most consumers don’t even know about Chery’s intelligent driving system.

From 2016 to now, in just 8 years, he has successively changed jobs to Tesla, Xiaopeng and Chery, all of which were responsible for intelligent driving systems, but also failed to achieve any results.

Without any technological breakthroughs or sales support, Gu Junli's resume is obviously not up to par. As for why this is the case, many of her former colleagues on Zhihu have been complaining and questioning.

It is not difficult to understand why she made the astonishing statement that "Tesla's intelligent driving is 1.5-2 years ahead of China". She may not really be a top expert in the industry, and she does not care to have a deep understanding of the market. Moreover, she has a problem that many executives of joint ventures have: relying on foreign powers to gain respect, and showing off her "I was so great in the United States" everywhere.

In the past two years, the rapid development of domestic new energy vehicle models has exceeded the expectations of most people. Many heads of joint venture manufacturers have made various bizarre remarks, such as that joint ventures have not yet made efforts, China's new energy vehicles mainly rely on low prices, cooperating with Chinese manufacturers will lose the soul, and Chinese manufacturers will disrupt order, which provided a lot of entertainment for netizens.

The reason why these people behave incompetently and furiously is mainly because they have lived under the roofs of foreign-funded manufacturers for a long time, so that their butts determine their brains and they have lost the basic judgment of the laws governing the development of things.

Gu Junli’s smart driving career started from Tesla. Although her experience at Tesla was not long, the halo of “having worked in Tesla’s autonomous driving department” still benefited Gu Junli a lot.

The stronger the Tesla FSD system is, the more valuable her resume will be. Although this system has no direct relationship with her, every progress of Tesla will make her secrete more dopamine because she is "proud of it."

In other words, it's not that Tesla's intelligent driving system is really strong, but that Gu Junli really wants Tesla to be strong. This is the same mentality as some joint venture executives. SAIC-GM's sales have plummeted, and SAIC's boss is more anxious than GM.

Tesla does have a set of skills in the field of intelligent driving, but to say that it is far ahead of domestic manufacturers is to completely ignore the facts. In fact, if Gu Junli really wants to make a career, it is better to do a good job in the Dazhuo Intelligent Driving. It is definitely useless to just recite the Diamond Sutra in front of the Buddha statue.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.