Gasgoo Munich- On June 24, at the Summer Davos 2026 in Dalian, Robin Zeng, chairman of CATL, offered a reality check on solid-state battery technology. Speaking during a session titled "No Electricity, No Intelligence," Zeng said that on a scale of 1 to 9, the industry's technical roadmap is currently stuck at level 4. Level 9, he noted, is where mass production becomes feasible.
He explained that this refers to the technical roadmap, but there is also the product roadmap: whether supply capacity is sufficient, and whether the reliability and safety of the finished product can meet requirements. The third is the commercial roadmap, which determines market acceptance and whether the product can sell in volume.
This isn't the first time Zeng has tempered expectations. Gasgoo previously reported that he offered a cautious outlook on the industrialization of all-solid-state batteries. When asked earlier if the technology could be deployed in a million vehicles by 2030, he dismissed the likelihood as "very small." He revealed that CATL internally rates the current maturity of all-solid-state battery technology at just TRL4—far from the maximum level 9.
In Zeng's view, the barriers to hitting the million-vehicle milestone by 2030 are rooted in performance and cost. "To reach that scale, cars have to be cheap enough," he said, adding that balancing performance with cost remains a significant struggle.
Image Source: CATL
Zeng also addressed energy concerns surrounding AI. "China's power grid and energy system are very mature," he said. "For the industry as a whole, the electricity consumed by new AI data centers is negligible compared to total generation. The real question is whether these centers run on fossil fuels or renewables." He acknowledged that powering data centers entirely with renewables poses challenges—specifically the land required for solar panels, wind turbines, and storage. Still, he praised China's mandate that new data centers use 80% renewable energy. "That is an excellent policy," Zeng said, "and China is fully capable of solving this problem."
