Xu, whose decade-long career in Japan included pioneering research for Toyota and leadership roles in landmark automotive projects, aims to bolster China’s technological edge as the country dominates the world’s largest EV market.
He arrives amid a shifting landscape in which Japan’s once-unrivalled auto industry struggles to keep pace with Chinese innovation and market momentum.
Xu’s research has mainly focused on control engineering including: control of the new energy vehicle power-train, the main components that propel the vehicle forward; intelligent networked vehicles and their autonomous driving decision and control; grid electric vehicle charging control; and control theories.
Xu received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the department of automation at Yanshan University, a provincial public university in Hebei, in 2012 and 2016 respectively before undertaking doctoral studies at Sophia University in Japan. He graduated in 2019 and spent a further two years at the institution to conduct postdoctoral training in the department of engineering and applied sciences.
