The Battery Billionaire Who’s Key to Tesla’s Future in China
CATL chairman Zeng Yuqun’s partnership with Elon Musk could boost the Chinese company’s global market share at a time of falling battery sales.
Employees walk through the canteen at CATL’s headquarters in Ningde, Fujian province.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergTesla Inc. needs to succeed in China if it wants to dominate the world of electric cars—especially in a post-virus world. To do that, Elon Musk is turning to a battery engineer who once helped Apple Inc. extend the life of its MacBook laptops.
Zeng Yuqun, 52, built Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. 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 $30-a-month job with a state-run company to an estimated $17 billion fortune.