CATL to keep expanding in the face of slower EV growth

The founder of China’s world-beating battery manufacturer is pressing ahead with expansion in the face of a global slowdown in electric-vehicle sales growth. Zeng, 56, founded CATL in 2011, a time when policymakers in China were making electric vehicles a national development priority. The company went public in 2018, and its success has made Zeng, who has a doctorate in condensed matter physics, a billionaire many times over. His net worth is around US$27.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd isn’t worried about overcapacity and, in fact, will crank up the output of its more technologically advanced products, said Robin Zeng, president and chairman of the company better known as CATL. In his first interview with an international news outlet since 2020, he said his company has found solutions to get battery-charge times down to 10 minutes and is working on reducing them even further.

“It’s a necessary process,” Zeng said of the dynamics playing out in China’s electric-vehicle industry. “The Chinese EV market, unlike policy-driven overseas markets that are still stuck at low penetration rates, is now market-driven.”

Zeng offered his survival of the tech-savviest assessment Monday from Hong Kong, where he delivered one of the keynotes at a sustainability conference. His view that market forces are taking hold in China is reinforced by the central government doing away with national subsidies at the end of 2022. Around that time, Tesla Inc fired the opening salvo in a price war that’s squeezed profit margins for many manufacturers and put others further into the red.

“Some companies may fall behind, and naturally there will be consolidation,” Zeng said.