Autonomous Truck Developer TuSimple Co-founder Huang Zehua Leaves Job

36Kr reported on July 5 that TuSimple, an autonomous driving truck company, has seen another high-level leadership change. Multiple independent sources claim that TuSimple co-founder and VP of engineering Huang Zehua left the job in October 2021 to start his own business in the trucking sector. In response, Huang confirmed his departure and is currently in the early stage of his business.

From the enterprise information displayed by Tianyancha, it appears that in April this year, Huang Zehua established a smart truck company. According to industry insiders, the direction of the new company is to provide hardware for automated driving software companies in the trucking industry.

This is the second wave of news about top executives from TuSimple leaving to start their own businesses. Earlier, Chen Mo, another co-founder of the company, had announced his entry into the sphere of hydrogen-energy and heavy truck manufacturing.

Huang Zehua graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a master’s degree in robotics and has 8 years of experience in computer vision R&D. In March 2015, he officially joined TuSimple as a co-founder and reported to current CEO Hou Xiaodi. He was the No.1 employee of TuSimple North America while later serving as the Vice President of Engineering at TuSimple. His duties were more involved with the hardware business of autonomous vehicles.

SEE ALSO: TuSimple Co-Founder Chen Mo Sets Up Autonomous Truck Firm Hydron

Along with Huang Zehua, TuSimple’s other VP-level employee, Wang Yi, also left. Wang Yi was mainly responsible for the company’s high-precision map boarding and vehicle architecture of automated driving.

As for the two men leaving their jobs to start their own businesses, industry insiders have speculated that the departures may be related to the slow progress of mass production for automated trucks. The general view in the industry is that because the highway scene is relatively closed, automated driving technology can land faster in the trucking field. However, in actual implementation, automated driving companies can only solve the problems of system perception and decision-making. The control of vehicles must rely on its hardware and OEM.