Exclusive News: Volvo Cars veteran joins Harmony FuTeng to build Internet Car

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai May 31^st)– It’s known by the editor of Gasgoo exclusively that Fu Qiang, who has just left his position as President and CEO at Volvo China Sales Company, will join intelligent EV company AiChe, a subsidiary of Harmony FuTeng, a joint venture co-founded by Harmony Auto(a Chinese carmaker), Tencent(a Chinese Internet giant) and Foxconn(a major supplier of Apple) in 2015. Following Dai Lei, former Infinite General Manager, Zhang Hailiang, former SAIC Vice President and Ding Lei, former SAIC Vice President, Fu Qiang is just another veteran in auto industry who throws himself into the wave of Internet Car-Building.

With 23 years of experience in auto industry, Fu Qiang has previously served as vice president for sales and marketing at Beijing Benz, head of Skoda brand at SAIC and vice General Manager for Audi Brand at FAW VW, and joined Volvo Cars in 2012, in charge of the marketing, sales, network and aftersales of the company. His achievement is very much recognized by Volvo, “Fu Qiang and his team has made significant contribution to the branding and sales of Volvo and successfully made Chinese market the core of the company’s global development.”

During his term of office, the sales of Volvo in 2013 and 2014 stood at 31,000 units and 81,000 units, up by 45.6% and 32.8% against the year before respectively. In the year of 2014, Volvo’s sales in Chinese market surpassed American market for the very first time and become the company’s largest market in the world. In the year of 2015, Volvo still sold 82,000 cars against a relatively weak luxury vehicle market, pushing the company passing the 500,000-unit milestone. In the first quarter of 2016, the sales of the company in Chinese are up by 13.4% and China is still the largest market of the company.

Fu Qiang has also contributed significantly to the brand building of Volvo in China. Besides, this executive has also accelerated the reform of the company’s sales channels.

As the researching and engineering platform of Harmony FuTeng, Aiche is aiming at building cheaper intelligent EVs with Internet capabilities. It’s known that the company has already completed the design work of its first 2 EV models and is planning to launch its new models as early as 2017.