Chinese Electric Car Company NextEV Hires New CEO

NextEV, a China-based electric car company that is poised to compete with Tesla, has recruited one of Silicon Valley’s prominent tech executives to lead its U.S. division.

Padmasree Warrior, who left Cisco in September, is joining NextEV as its U.S. CEO and head of global development. Since leaving Cisco, there were rumors that she was seeking out her first CEO position, with some suggesting that she would end up at Twitter.

NextEV is developing smart, high-performance electric vehicles, and is considered to be one of the leading contenders to compete in the area of high-end EVs that is currently dominated by Tesla. The company is looking to California as one of its break-out markets, as the state wants to have 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025.

Although the amount of capital that the company has raised remains unclear, Bloomberg News reported in September that the firm is seeking as much as $1 billion from investors. Headquartered in Shanghai, NextEV has an 85,000 square foot research facility in San Jose, California, as well as design centers in Munich, Beijing, Hong Kong and London. It is backed by some investors with deep pockets, including Chinese Internet giant Tencent, Bitauto.com founder William Li, autohome.com.cn founder Xiang Li, JD.com founder Richard Liu, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital and JOY Capital.

Warrior has referred to the company as a “global startup.” She has described her role as twofold, acting as CEO of the U.S. division of the company as well as serving globally as chief digital officer in charge of its technology efforts, including software development and user experience.

“The principle vision is to build a car that is designed for the mobile and Internet era,” said Warrior. “We’re trying to imagine how the experience of having a car would be different today, and how you would involve the customer in the process.”

According to Warrior, one of the goals for NextEV’s offerings is to be more affordable than Tesla’s high-end vehicles, and the company plans to introduce its products in China first. It has already brought on 400 employees, and its president is Dr. Martin Leach, who was previously the CEO of Maserati and the president of Ford Europe.

The new NextEV CEO told Fortune that although her own Tesla Model S represents the cutting edge in cars, she plans to build a car that excels in “user experience” and is more the “extension of the mobile Internet.” She also wants to “apply technology to solve fundamental problems” such as climate change and global pollution.

“I really care about solving big global problems,” said Warrior. “It’s not just electric cars. It’s how you can use the mobile Internet era to bring the user much closer to the brand – we call it user enterprise. The vision is not just about technology, but changing the experience.”

China, the world’s largest auto market, is turning to electric vehicles to alleviate its severe pollution problems, with municipal governments exempting plug-in autos from license plate lotteries. NextEV is one of many well-funded electric vehicle startups that are based in or backed by firms in China. Several of these companies are setting up facilities in California to gain access to engineering talent, with plans to initially sell cars in China before taking on other markets.