Dr. Robin Zeng on the "CATL Standard": Safety, Reliability, and Longevity at the Core

Today, I would like to talk about a simple yet fundamental topic: Quality. 

Why is it especially crucial to discuss quality at this juncture? 

In the first half of this year, new energy vehicle (NEV) sales in China surpassed 7.4 million units, accounting for nearly half of the total vehicle sales. Globally, power battery installations exceeded 608 GWh, with Chinese companies occupying seven of the top ten spots and capturing over 70% of the market share. 

Yet, precisely at a time like this, we must remain vigilant. 

Since the beginning of this year, over 600 new vehicle models have been launched domestically—averaging nearly three per day. Meanwhile, batch failures have emerged in certain power battery products, which is deeply alarming. Amid fierce competition in speed, specifications, and pricing, development cycles are shrinking continuously—yet this is coming at the expense of product quality and consumer trust. 

Therefore, I wish to reiterate: Quality is the single most important keyword for the new energy industry. 

So, how should we understand quality?

In my view, it begins with a deep sense of reverence. We Chinese have a saying: "Walking as if on the edge of an abyss, or stepping on thin ice." This is the exact mindset required when making power batteries. Today, 30 million vehicles powered by our batteries are on the road worldwide, bringing billions of our battery cells into households everywhere. The larger this number grows, the greater my sense of responsibility becomes. We cannot let down the trust of every single user.

At this year's Beijing Auto Show, we showcased a battery pack with a record of 6 years and 840,000 kilometers, which still retains 88% of its capacity. Our Zhangbei Energy Storage Project has operated safely for 14 years, with a capacity retention rate exceeding 80% after 9 years of service. There are countless such user success stories. 

I often ask myself: Why do so many automotive partners and consumers choose and trust us? I believe it is because of our quality—what we internally call "The CATL Standard."

What is The CATL Standard?

In my view, beyond high performance, its core can be summarized in three words: Safety, Reliability, Longevity. 

What does this mean? It means consistent quality, no matter when, no matter where and no matter which vehicle it is installed in. 

Therefore, the first pillar of The CATL Standard is maintaining reverence for risk and treating every low-probability event as a matter of utmost importance. Power batteries demand extreme precision and allow for virtually zero tolerance for error. At today’s mass-production scale, even the smallest issue will be magnified exponentially. Many believe that minor flaws will likely never cause an incident and that we shouldn’t be overly meticulous. But in my view, there is absolutely no room for wishful thinking. Once deployed at a massive scale, a minor flaw can escalate into a major issue threatening user safety. 

Making one battery is not difficult; the true challenge lies in making one billion batteries of identical quality—and that is consistency, my second point. The battery sector is subject to the "bucket effect": a battery pack contains hundreds of cells, and a vehicle's range and lifespan are not determined by the best cell, but by the worst one. Therefore, we strictly insist on strictly keeping the cell defect rate down to one in a billion. 

The third point I want to share is that quality cannot be inspected into a product; it is built in through design and manufacturing. Our logic is to resolve risks before they become problems. During the design phase, from material selection and cell architecture to system design, all potential risks are factored in in advance. During the manufacturing phase, we strictly control every single process and parameter, using AI to shift quality management from "discovering problem post-event" to "identifying anomalies in advance." 

Because of our zero-tolerance policy towards quality issues we established the industry's first and only "Adversarial Team." The recruitment standards for this team are aligned with our R&D team. Its members span multi-disciplinary backgrounds such as electrochemistry, mechanical engineering, and artificial intelligence. They are fully qualified scientists with independent R&D capabilities and possess absolute veto power. 

After so many years in battery industry, I am increasingly convinced of one truth: When quality is pursued to its ultimate limit, what remains is trust. 

Today, China's new energy industry has gone global. The question on everyone's mind is no longer "Can China make good new energy vehicles (NEVs)? "  but rather "Are Chinese brands worthy of long-term trust?" 

Such trust cannot be bought with low prices; it is built on high quality—maintained day after day, decade after decade. 

Therefore, I hope that these three words—Safety, Reliability, Longevity—will not only belong to CATL, but will become a long-term commitment shared by all our peers in the new energy industry, as we jointly propel "Made in China" towards "Trusted in China." 

Every September marks the National Quality Month in China, as well as CATL's Quality Month. This September, we will officially launch the inaugural "The CATL Standard Global Open Month". We have prepared a rich array of activities at our headquarters in Ningde and across our production bases. Here, I formally invite our industry partners and the media to visit CATL and experience "The CATL Standard" firsthand!