World's largest EV battery company founder says Elon Musk's bet on battery tech will fail

Elon Musk made a big bet on the battery technology known as 4680 cylindrical cell technology, making as many as 100 million of them. Unfortunately, these Tesla 4680 cells are supposed to have "five times" more energy capacity than what was announced back in September this year.

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A report by The Information revealed Musk set a deadline for Tesla employees to complete the stack of batteries before the end of the year. Notably, these batteries are the bread and butter for Tesla as they are used in some of the company's electric vehicles, such as the Cybertruck. However, Robin Zeng, the founder of the world's biggest EV battery company, Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), told Reuters that Musk's big bet on 4680 cylindrical cell technology "is going to fail and never be successful."

CATL batteries are used in some Tesla vehicles and are also used in other branded EVs such as Ford and Mustang. However, the company specializes in a different type of battery technology called lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP), which can't provide as much as the cylindrical cell units. Zeng also spoke about meeting with Musk and discussing batteries, to which he said he wasn't impressed with the CEO's knowledge on the subject. Zeng did acknowledge that he was impressed with Musk's knowledge on chips, software, hardware, and "mechanical things".

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