>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.”
I wish the headlines would not be so literal because he praised Elon on other things.
Actual materials chemist here. A PhD in physics is not that relevant to understanding the real electrochemical nuts and bolts if a battery.
Just look up what a solid electrolyte interface (SEI) layer is to see how bush league current battery technology is. Compared to CMOS tech, which has benefited from trillions of dollars of R&D, batteries are in the stone age.
That's myopically complacent; 20 years ago some car makers probably said the same thing: bah, Musk doesn't know how to make cars. Now something like every other new car on North American roads is a Tesla.
but if you look closer tesla only sells one car in the segment, while toyota "competes with itself" with camry+corolla > model 3, and same with honda's accord+civic > model 3
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.”
I wish the headlines would not be so literal because he praised Elon on other things.