EV expert Xu Fuguo leaves US$30 million project in Japan, takes Chinese university post

EV expert Xu Fuguo leaves US$30 million project in Japan, takes Chinese university post

An electric vehicle control systems researcher, Xu Fuguo, has left a high-profile 4.5 billion yen (US$30 million) Japanese government-funded project and joined Dalian University of Technology in northeastern China amid intensifying global competition in the EV sector.

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.

While the circumstances around his departure are not known, he returned to China this month as a professor in the mechanical engineering school at the university in Dalian, a modern port city in Liaoning province.

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 Fuguo has been appointed professor in the mechanical engineering school at Dalian University of Technology. Photo: Handout

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.

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