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The battery billionaire who holds the key to Tesla’s future in China and Elon Musk’s global electric-car dominance

  • Zeng turns Amperex into a US$17 billion fortune from a US$30-a-month job with state-run company
  • His company will supply battery to Tesla’s Made-in-Shanghai electric vehicles from this month

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A worker walks past a battery factory of Contemporary Amperex Technology in Ningde in December 2016. Photo: Reuters
Bloomberg
Tesla needs to succeed in China if it wants to dominate the world of electric cars, especially in a post-coronavirus world. To do that, Elon Musk is turning to a battery engineer who once helped Apple extend the life of its MacBook laptops.
Zeng Yuqun, 52, built Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd. (CATL) into China’s battery champion in less than a decade, creating the largest global producer of rechargeable cells for the plug-in vehicles considered to be the future of cars. That effort has helped propel Zeng from a modest hillside village and US$30-a-month job with a state-run company to an estimated US$17 billion (HK$131.7 billion) fortune.
CATL’s products are in almost every major global auto brand, and starting this month they’ll also power electric vehicles manufactured by Tesla at its new factory on the outskirts of Shanghai. It is an alliance with lucrative potential, combining the sector’s most-popular car – the Tesla Model 3 – with low-cost batteries in a sizeable market. Last year, Chinese consumers bought more than three electric vehicles for every one sold in the US, but faces an uncertain future as the pandemic rocks the global economy.
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There is already a developing partnership between the two executives, according to Zeng. The pair trade text messages to discuss prospective innovations in technology, their responses to the challenges wrought by the coronavirus and the Tesla chief’s primary obsession: cheaper batteries and vehicles.

Workers check products at Contemporary Amperex Technology’s lithium battery manufacturing in Ningde. Photo: Xinhua
Workers check products at Contemporary Amperex Technology’s lithium battery manufacturing in Ningde. Photo: Xinhua
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“Elon talks about cost all day long, and I told him to be assured that I would have solutions,” Zeng said in an interview at CATL’s headquarters in Ningde, where his 20th-floor office overlooks a fishing hub on China’s southeastern coast now transformed by clusters of battery plants and laboratories. “We get along well. He’s a fun guy.”

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