Zhao Ming (赵明) joins Qianli Technology (千里科技), vows to “sell weapons” to win the auto market

A new recruit with a big ambition

Zhao Ming (赵明), the former head of Honor (荣耀), has been named co‑chairman of Qianli Technology (千里科技) and, in a wide‑ranging interview, pitched an audacious goal: to become the world’s largest provider of intelligent driving solutions. He framed the company’s commercial mission in stark terms — “selling weapons” — a metaphor for delivering high‑value, defensible driving systems that automakers must buy rather than bargain over. How will Qianli break a market where one customer often dominates and margins come from B‑to‑B deals, not end‑user branding? Zhao says the answer is value, not price.

Technology, responsibility and consumers

Zhao avoided getting bogged down in the L2/L3/L4 technical debate and instead dissected the evolution of autonomy as a transfer of responsibility — from driver to brand. He argued that regulatory acceptance, consumer trust and manufacturer commitment form a “three‑party cognition” that determines when higher autonomy can safely roll out. Zhao said Qianli mixes large‑model algorithms with fast engineering cycles and has been benchmarking against Tesla’s Full Self‑Driving (FSD) — he reported testing FSD and uses that experience as an internal target for comfort and safety.

Partnership, commercialization and geopolitics

Zhao described his partnership with AI veteran Yin Qi (印奇) as complementary: Yin drives deep technical strategy while Zhao focuses on global commercial systems and organizational build‑out. He declined to set headline KPIs for himself, instead emphasizing talent and strategic clarity as priorities. It has been reported that Zhao was courted by multiple firms before joining Qianli; he said a single challenge — cracking AI’s commercial loop in vehicles — persuaded him. In the broader context of US‑China tech rivalry and export controls, Chinese auto‑tech firms are under pressure to deliver domestic end‑to‑end solutions, making Qianli’s push for a commercial “closed loop” both a business bet and a strategic imperative.