Tesla’s top battery supplier says Elon doesn’t know how to make battery cells

Tesla’s top battery cell supplier, CATL, is throwing some cold water on Tesla’s battery plans and the CEO even said that Elon Musk “doesn’t know how to make battery cells.”

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) had an incredible rise and became the world’s largest producer of battery cells for electric vehicles in the last few years – and by a significant margin.

It even supplies Tesla with many battery cells for its EV production at Gigafactory Shanghai.

CATL’s success has made Robin Zeng, its founder and chairman, one of the foremost authorities on battery cell production, which makes his new comments on Tesla’s battery cell production effort interesting.

Tesla buys most of its batttery cells from suppliers, inlcuding CATL and Panasonic, but it has also launched its own effort to produce its own cylindical 4680 battery cells, which are currently only used in the Cybertruck.

The company has had issues ramping up production of its own battery cells, but it reported making progress lately – going as far as claiming that its own cell will achieve better cost than anyone in the industry by the end of the year.

But CATL is not impressed.

Zeng spoke to Reuters recently and reported that he had a discussion with Musk earlier this year when he visited China. The CATL founder warned Musk that he thinks Tesla’s 4680 effort will fail:

Zeng said he had told Musk directly that his bet on a cylindrical battery, known as the 4680, “is going to fail and never be successful.”

The CATL founder, who has a PhD in physics, was also unimpressed with Musk’s electrochemistry knowledge when debating Tesla’s 4680 batteyr cell effort:

“We had a very big debate, and I showed him,” Zeng said. “He was silent. 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.”

In this interview, Zeng was very candid about his chat with Musk. He even touched on Musk’s notirous issues with timelines.

He commented:

“His problem is overpromising. I talked to him,” Zeng said. “Maybe something needs five years. But he says two years. I definitely asked him why. He told me he wanted to push people.”

This has been the excuse that many Musk fans have been using to justify his missed timelines: he is trying to motivate his troups.

Electrek’s Take

I am surprised that the head of a supplier would talk about the CEO of one of his main customers like that.

Obviously, he is biased since Tesla’s battery effort could cut into his business, but at the same time, Tesla has always made it clear that they would always need to keep buying from battery suppliers.

I think what is most interesting here is that CATL’s expertise is in LFP cells and we know that Tesla is looking to make its own LFP cells at one point. That might be what Zeng is talking about here.

With that said, Tesla did claim that it is on the verge of accomplishing its cost target with the 4680 cell. It might be true, but I have issues believing some of the things Tesla claims these days.