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According to Dongfeng Toutiao, a subsidiary of Dongfeng Company, major personnel changes have taken place at the top of Lantu Automobile. On the evening of July 19, Lantu Automotive Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Lantu Automobile"), a high-end intelligent electric vehicle company owned by Dongfeng Motor, held a cadre meeting and announced the largest high-level personnel adjustment since its establishment.

According to the concern of the automobile industry, the senior personnel adjustment of Lantu Automobile involves a number of senior executives, such as Lu Fang, of which Lu Fang is no longer concurrently Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Lantu Automobile, but still serves as CEO of the company. According to public data, Lu Fang was born in Songyuan, Jilin Province in 1976. He once worked in FAW-Volkswagen and FAW car, and began to join Dongfeng system after 2018. In December 2018, he became the technical director of the special project of the strategic planning department of Dongfeng Automobile Group Co., Ltd.; in 2019, he became the general manager (CEO) of Lantu Automobile (formerly the h Division of Dongfeng Automobile Group Co., Ltd.); and he has been the Chief Technical Director (CTO) of Lantu Automobile since 2019. The CTO position of Lantu Automobile is replaced by Wang Junjun. Before that, his focus was mainly focused on Dongfeng Automobile Technology Center, where he served as Director of Powertrain Design Room of Powertrain Department of Dongfeng Automobile Technology Center and other important R & D positions such as Deputy Chief engineer of C-Series (second-generation machine) project.

In addition to the above-mentioned executive adjustments, Lantu Motor also disclosed the appointment of party committee secretary and two assistants to the general manager, of which Qin Jie was appointed temporary party committee member and party committee secretary; Liu Ming was appointed temporary party committee member, discipline inspection committee member, and secretary of the discipline inspection commission; Gong Xuesong and Shao Mingfeng were appointed as assistants to the general manager of the company.

As for the chief brand officer CBO, Lantu Motors did not explain. It is reported that before this personnel adjustment, senior personnel of Lantu had changed, and in early March this year, Lantu Automobile officially revealed that its chief brand officer (CBO), Lei Xin, had been transferred from his post. On July 15, the media reported that Yu Fei, general manager of marketing for the Euler brand of Great Wall Motor, would take over the position, but Great Wall did not respond to the news, while Lantu Automobile staff said that at present, "no relevant appointment notice has been received." Up to now, the chief brand officer of Lantu Automobile is still vacant, and the related business is also managed by Chief Executive Officer Lu Fang. In addition, Liu Zhanzhu, the former polar krypton management, also joined Lantu Automobile as the deputy general manager of the sales company, in charge of brand and marketing plate. Before joining Lantu Automobile, Liu Zhanzhu served as head of Strategy and Operations Management Department of FAW-Volkswagen Audi sales Department and SAIC General Buick Brand Marketing Director.

Lantu Automobile is a high-end intelligent electric brand of Dongfeng Automobile Group. It was founded in 2018 and officially released its brand logo and Chinese name on July 17, 2020. At present, Lantu Automobile has a total of two production models, namely Lantu FREE and Lantu Dreamer. The first model, Lantu FREE, was launched on June 19, 2021, and delivery began in August of the same year. The car is located in a medium and large SUV, with a total of two power models, the pure electric version and the extended range version, priced at 333600 yuan and 313600 yuan respectively. The Lantu Dreamer is the second mass production model under Lantu Motors, and it is also its first MPV model, positioning as a large MPV. The car launched a total of four models, which officially went on sale on May 7, with a price range of 36.99-439900 yuan.

According to the data of the Federation of passengers, Lantu delivered a total of 6878 new cars in the first half of this year, with an average of only about 1100 per month. At the beginning of 2022, Lantu set a sales target of 46000 vehicles for the whole year. According to this calculation, the completion rate of Lantu Automobile in the first half of the year was only 14.95%. On May 17, Lantu Automobile held a remobilization meeting of "one million vehicles". At the meeting, Lantu made it clear that he would make every effort to meet the sales target of 10,000 vehicles in the next 100 days. In early July, at the mid-year work meeting, Lantu Motor set its annual sales target to 31000 vehicles, but in spite of this, it is still a far cry from the target of 31000 vehicles. If the target is to be achieved, it means that more than 24000 cars will be sold in the second half of the year, with an average monthly sales of about 4000 vehicles. For current Lantu cars, it is obviously very difficult to achieve this goal.

From the history of the development of Lantu Automobile, the Lantu brand has been released for less than three years, but the personnel management is quite volatile and the market performance is dismal. For comparison, polar krypton cars, which are also high-end electric brands of traditional car companies, delivered more than 19000 vehicles in the first half of the year, more than twice the sales volume of Lantu cars. As for the reasons for the poor performance of the Lantu automobile market, the industry generally attributed it to the unclear positioning of the Lantu automobile brand, resulting in low consumer recognition and value perception. However, this large-scale personnel transfer of Lantu Automobile may be related to its market performance in the first half of the year. With the change of a new round of personnel adjustment, it remains to be seen whether the decadent situation of Lantu Automobile can be reversed.

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