Huawei Technologies Company Limited, a multinational tech giant headquartered in Shenzhen city of Guangdong province of China, has confirmed that it has removed Su Jing from the post of director of intelligent (autonomous) driving products department after he made controversial comments about Tesla EVs.

Earlier this month, Jing made his appearance felt at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) and claimed that American EV giant Tesla’s vehicles are “killing” people. He stressed that Autopilot-equipped Tesla EVs have a very high rate of accidents.

Stirring up a hornets’ nest, the senior executive argued that accidents involving Tesla EVs killed many people in the past few years. He admitted that the use of the word “killing” in place of accident might sound serious to everyone, but added that it is really ugly to allow machines to enter the human society as it would increase rate of fatal accidents.

The comments were controversial as there are no stats proving that Tesla EVs have a higher rate of accidents than any other brand. Moreover, Tesla has always warned that its Autopilot software is just to assist the driver, not to replace the driver. In fact, the American tech giant has made it compulsory for its Autopilot users to remain in touch with the steering wheel to take control of the vehicle in case of any emergency.

Reacting to the controversial comments, Huawei removed Jing from the position of director of intelligent driving products department, and send him to the reserve team for training & distribution.

Confirming the disciplinary action, Huawei said, “Su Jing was removed from the post of director of intelligent driving products department. Su Jing will enter the reserve team for training and distribution. Sources revealed that the appointment and removal document was signed and approved by Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei.”

Jing’s comments were undoubtedly controversial, but most of the industry experts are of the view that they were not controversial enough to require the executive’s removal from the top position. It is also possible that some of the meaning of the comments might have been lost in translation.

When asked for a comment on his removal from the post of director of intelligent driving products department, Jing said he just wanted to warn the world that as self-driving or autonomous vehicles could cause more accidents in the future, so some concrete action needed to be taken to address that.