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

Engineer returns as professor at Dalian university as Japan’s auto industry struggles to keep up with Chinese innovation and market momentum

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Xu Fuguo, whose research has focused on EV control engineering, started as a professor in the mechanical engineering school at Dalian University of Technology after spending years researching in the Japanese auto sector. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 2:00pm, 28 Mar 2025Updated: 4:30pm, 28 Mar 2025

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 on EVs – a market it now dominates.

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.