A sudden vacancy at the top of Chery’s intelligence push
Leiphone’s New Intelligent Driving team reports that Xie Baojun, Chery’s vice president and the operating head of its Intelligent Centre, has apparently left the company. His internal Feishu status shows suspended, and Chery had not responded to the report at publication.
Xie joined Chery in October 2024 through its Dazhuo Intelligence unit, focused on autonomous-driving research. In May 2025 Chery merged Lion Tech, Dazhuo and its research institute into a single intelligence centre, and Xie became its de facto operating head, overseeing the smart cockpit, assisted driving and digital architecture.
Under him, Chery consolidated its Falcon driving suite, narrowed its partner list and pushed full-stack self-development. At the 2026 AI Night it launched the Falcon 500, 700 and 900 driving products alongside the Lingxi cockpit and the Xiaoqi classmate AI assistant, with Xie frequently the public face of the progress.
A career spent inside Chinese driving stacks
Before Chery, Xie spent years inside Geely. He joined Volvo around 2010 and led software, electronics, autonomous driving and the vehicle electrical architecture, rising to senior director of Volvo’s Asia-Pacific research. He then became Zeekr’s vice president for software and electronics, before leaving in October 2024 for Chery’s Dazhuo unit.
His departure, if confirmed, removes a rare executive who has run autonomous driving across both a legacy giant and a fast-rising challenger, exactly as Chery leans on cheaper, locally built intelligence to defend its export growth.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Leiphone report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://www.leiphone.com/category/transportation/oiSyYkdJBNF6AfVW.html.