CATL Founder Burns Elon Musk

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I used to be studying by means of Steve’s article on CATL’s fascinating new transfer into producing EV platforms and CATL founder Robin Zeng’s tackle solid-state batteries. Them, method down on the backside, I obtained to Zeng’s feedback about discussions with Elon Musk. Holy cow — there have been some jaw droppers there!

I’m not going to say Steve buried the lede, as a result of the CATL plan he highlighted actually is the larger information. That mentioned, he did bury a fairly saucy story!

In case you missed the feedback amidst that bigger piece about CATL batteries and innovation, right here’s a listing of eye-popping comments Zeng made about Musk, who the reporting signifies Zeng is in common contact with:

1. Zeng instructed Musk the 4680 battery “is going to fail and never be successful. We had a very big debate, and I showed him. He was silent.”
2. “He doesn’t know how to make a battery. It’s about electrochemistry. He’s good for the chips, the software, the hardware, the mechanical things.”
3. “I talked to him,” Zeng mentioned. “Maybe something needs five years, but he says two years. I definitely asked him why. He told me he wanted to push people. He probably himself thinks it needs five years, but if you believe him when he says two years, you will be in big trouble.”

To begin with, that’s fairly wild to only go on the market and say publicly {that a} competitor and prime buyer’s strategy to a core product is actually silly, and can “never be successful.” After which indicating that Musk didn’t have a response, and stayed silent? That’s like road basketball trash discuss.

However he went additional. Zeng claims Musk doesn’t even know the fundamentals of batteries — doesn’t find out about electrochemistry. This may all be sacrilegious to Musk followers, and it’s like saying Musk doesn’t know his ABCs. He does give a nod to Musk’s experience on 4 different issues — chips, the software program, the {hardware}, the mechanical issues. Nevertheless, after a few a long time within the battery enterprise, it’s form of scathing.

To shut, he’s calling out Musk for basically mendacity — to his workers about precise targets, which will be considerably comprehensible with an goal, however Zeng doesn’t appear to essentially perceive or agree with that strategy; but additionally extra broadly to the general public.

It’s not search for Elon.

Now, as we’ve mentioned earlier than, Musk is now in a really tough place. Trump has been anti-China, anti-China, anti-China; whereas Muks has all the time been cautious to be complimentary about and towards Xi Jinping and China. About half of Tesla’s automobile manufacturing takes place in China, and an enormous chunk of the corporate’s gross sales. Musk can’t threat changing into a persona non grata. If he had one thing like his regular response to anybody important of him, he’d be placing himself and Tesla at vital enterprise threat. So, effectively, his luckiest state of affairs can be not discovering out about Zeng’s interview. If he does discover out about Zeng’s interview, effectively, he’s going to want to deploy rather more self-restraint and humility than he’s used to.

Fascinating occasions….