About Robin Zeng
Robin Zeng, chairman and CEO of CATL, said at a June 2026 interview that solid-state batteries are not the "holy grail" many imagine, citing unresolved technical issues such as solid-state interface problems and material compaction misalignment during production. He assessed solid-state battery technology readiness at level four on a nine-level scale, and argued that large-scale commercialization before 2030 for millions of vehicles is unlikely due to cost and performance hurdles. He emphasized that innovation is event-driven rather than time-driven, stating that "you cannot schedule the innovation."
At CATL's Tech Day in April 2026, Zeng introduced the second-generation Free Voy super hybrid battery, which he said achieves a 500-kilometer pure electric range with 10C supercharging. He also stated that for battery electric vehicles priced above 250,000 yuan, using LFP chemistry is "a disguised downgrade," and asserted that CATL reinvested one-third of its revenue into R&D, resulting in over 60,000 patents. He characterized the future energy replenishment landscape as one where home charging, public charging, and battery swapping each take a share and complement one another, and said globalizing Chinese technologies requires "high-quality innovation and verifiable capability."
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Robin Zeng's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:00
So most people believe that before 2030, large-scale commercialization of solid-state batteries is impossible. Do you agree with this view?
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Robin Zeng0:08
What do you mean by large-scale commercialization? This needs to be clearly defined.
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Interviewer0:12
It means being able to do large-scale vehicle installation, for example, millions of cars equipped with solid-state batteries.
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Robin Zeng0:20
The possibility for millions of cars is very small. For millions, the car must be cheap enough. In terms of performance and cost, there will be some difficulties. Most people think commercialization is impossible before 2030.
I never use time as a definition. We should use events as the definition. Only one thing changes automatically with time, and that's your age. But for something to succeed or not, we call it event-driven, not time-driven. Whether this event can happen depends on technical breakthroughs. If it breaks through, it can; if not, it can't. But as we say, you cannot schedule innovation.
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Interviewer0:55
So we still have to wait for breakthroughs in several key scientific and technical issues.
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Interviewer1:01
And what are these issues?
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Robin Zeng1:02
These issues are too complex. For example, the solid-state interface issue. It's quite difficult.
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Interviewer1:08
Why does this interface prevent the battery from being mass-produced?
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Robin Zeng1:12
Batteries have several parts: cathode, anode, and electrolyte. For solids, contact is most important. It needs to be tightly pressed together so ions can conduct. So what to do? You have to press all these materials together. Currently, there's a process called warm isostatic pressing at 6,000 atmospheres, pressing from all directions equally. It sounds like a good thing, but the compaction densities of these materials are all different. You have copper and aluminum, right? Cathode materials and anode materials. After pressing them together, they misalign because of different compaction densities. How do you solve this misalignment? Everything pressed in the lab has misalignment. So currently, what's produced in the lab still faces huge pressure in application. So it's not the holy grail that everyone imagines.
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Interviewer2:00
So for solid-state battery commercialization, we still can't see when this event will occur because there are too many problems to solve.
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Robin Zeng2:07
For anything, there are three routes. One is the technical route, meaning there are no showstoppers, no technical barriers. The second is the product route, meaning it can be mass-produced and supplied. The third is the commodity route, meaning it should be cost-effective and cheap enough to be accepted, because if it's too expensive, the consumer base shrinks. Among these three routes, the first one—they keep asking me if the technical route is actually viable. Well, we have a ruler to measure it. We call it the Technology Readiness Level, TRL, which is the technical maturity. It goes from 1 to 9, and each level has its own scope and implications. Right now, solid-state batteries are at four. In the technical route, they're only at four. I'm not even talking about the product or commodity routes. So, going back to what I said, the most important thing is still being event-driven. From an R&D logic perspective, it's event-driven to see if it can be achieved rather than time-driven. The only thing time can drive is our age. Every tick-tock is just your age increasing.
