World’s biggest battery maker says Elon Musk’s 4680 cell ‘will fail’

Robin Zeng, the founder of the world’s largest EV battery company, says that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s big bet on the 4680 cylindrical cell technology “will fail and will not succeed.” Zeng, chairman of Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), says Reuters that when Musk visited China in April, “We had a very big debate, and I showed him. He was silent. He can’t make a battery.”

Tesla’s 4680 “table” cells, used in some of its vehicles, including the Cybertruck, are supposed to have “five times” more power, and the company announced in September that it has produced 100 million of them. A recent report by Information said Musk gave the battery team a deadline of the end of the year to address costs and other issues.

On the other hand, CATL batteries go inside everything from Tesla cars in China to Ford EVs in North America like the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning. The company specializes in lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which typically don’t get as much range as the cylindrical cell units used in many of Tesla’s vehicles.

Although Zeng wasn’t impressed with Musk’s battery knowledge, he thought he was good at chips, software, hardware, and “mechanical stuff.”

Zeng also noted that Musk’s problem is “overconfidence” at times, which he often does with practice, especially regarding Full Self-Driving technology. “Maybe something needs five years. But he says two years. I definitely asked him why. He told me that he wanted to push people.”