Elon Musk’s Biggest Flaws, Revealed by the World’s Top EV Battery Maker

Tesla CEO Elon Musk “doesn’t know how to make a battery.” That’s the claim of Robin Zeng, the founder and chairman of CATL, the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker.

In an interview with Reuters last week, Zeng said he told Musk that he was making a bad bet on the design of Tesla’s proprietary 4680 battery used in its Model Y and Cybertruck vehicles.

Its cylindrical design, Zeng said, “is going to fail and never be successful.”

The China-based CATL is a leading producer of rectangular “prismatic” cells, whose flat design allows for more compact battery packs. Its lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries can also be around 30 percent cheaper than conventional nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) batteries. Tesla has used CATL’s LFP batteries in some of its Model 3 and Model Y trims.

Zeng, whose net worth is an estimated $41 billion, had more criticism for Musk — the world’s richest man — which he says he shared directly with him.

Musk ‘Doesn’t Know How to Make a Battery’

The CATL chairman praised Musk for being “good” on the non-battery dimensions of electric vehicle technology — or, in his words, “the chips, the software, the hardware, [and] the mechanical things.”

But he said that the Tesla CEO simply does not know how to make a battery. He told Reuters that he said this to Musk’s face, who responded with silence.

“He doesn’t know how to make a battery. It’s about electrochemistry.”

Robin Zeng, founder and chairman of CATL, on Elon Musk

CATL is at the center of the U.S.-China trade and technology war. The Biden administration has poured billions into subsidizing domestic EV and EV battery industries to reduce China’s dominance over this cutting-edge sector. Chinese ruler Xi Jinping has identified EVs as an industry that Beijing must dominate in his “Made in China 2025” program.

Elon Musk Overpromises

Zeng had more frank words for Musk. He said that the newly appointed co-chair of the incoming Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency” overpromises and underdelivers — at least when it comes to timelines.

While Musk has publicly promised that the fully autonomous Cybercab robotaxi will be ready in 2026, Zeng said that Musk “probably” really believes it will take five years.

The CATL chairman warned that Musk’s “problem is overpromising” and cautioned, “If you believe him when he says two years, you will be in big trouble.”

Musk’s History of Overpromising

Musk’s record confirms Zeng’s claims.

In 2015, Musk said that the Model S could break the 1000-km battery range by 2017 “for sure.” It’s been seven years since and no Tesla vehicle has yet met that threshold.

In 2016, Musk promised that he would deliver Full Self-Driving vehicles within two years. The project remains far from achieving fully autonomous Level 5 capabilities.

In 2019, Musk promised “over a million robotaxis on the road” by the next year, again adding the words “for sure” to signal his confidence.

And in 2014, Musk said the first people could be taken to Mars as early as 2024. The most recent estimate by NASA is that the earliest this could happen is in the 2030s.