CATL Leaders Reveal Why the Energy‑Storage Business Must Step Up Its Game

When CATL first burst onto the scene a decade ago, everyone knew it as the Chinese champion of electric‑vehicle batteries. The company rode the wave of EV adoption, supplying giants like BMW, Tesla and Toyota. Fast forward to today and the same name now appears on megaprojects such as Australia’s 2.4 GWh Collie Battery and Nevada’s 1.4 GWh Gemini Solar‑Plus‑Storage installation. The shift is deliberate – CATL wants half of its sales to come from stationary storage by 2030.

We sat down with two of the people steering that transition. Hank Zhao, who started at CATL in 2010 and spent 11 years in the EV division before moving to storage in mid‑2021, and Bruce Li, the chief technology officer for AC systems, shared stories that feel part memoir, part industry road‑map.

“Back then the buzz was all about phones and early EVs,” Zhao recalled. “It wasn’t until 2021, when demand for grid storage exploded in the U.S. and China, that I started thinking ‘maybe it’s time for a new challenge.’” The timing felt right, and the move turned out to be a pivotal career pivot.

One of the biggest eye‑openers for Zhao was the cultural gap between automotive contracts and storage agreements. “Car makers are obsessive about specs. They’ll test every parameter, demand evidence, and penalise any slip‑up,” he explained. “In storage, many customers simply sign a warranty and expect the product to work. If you miss a liquidated‑damage clause, you get fined – that’s often the only safeguard they care about.”

This laissez‑faire attitude, Zhao warns, breeds risk. “We’ve already seen fires, under‑performance and even bankruptcies in the storage space because there’s no global standard yet. In the automotive world, the rules have been hammered out over a century – that’s the safety net we’re missing here.”

Both executives argue that the answer lies in transplanting automotive‑grade processes into the storage arena. Li notes that some clients balk at the perceived added cost and complexity. “They ask, ‘Why do you need a V‑Model or TS 16949 for a battery bank?’ The truth is, those tools are the only thing that have proved they can keep a product safe and reliable for years.”

CATL has taken those lessons to heart, crafting its own suite of design‑to‑validation steps that start at the system level, drill down to sub‑components, and then climb back up to confirm everything works as intended. “If we can guarantee the same level of quality in a 2 GWh plant as we do in a sedan battery, we’ll be around for the next 100 years,” Zhao said with a grin.

Leadership, especially across the complex Western‑European market, comes with its own pressure cooker moments. Zhao says he combats anxiety by breaking down worries into concrete actions. “If I’m scared of a short‑circuit scenario, I make sure our test labs have already simulated it, validated the design, and documented a response plan. Knowing the test is done turns a vague fear into a manageable task.”

The interview wrapped up with a candid admission: the storage sector is still in its adolescence, but it’s maturing fast. With automotive rigor as a backbone, CATL hopes to lead the charge, turning today’s growing‑pains into tomorrow’s standards.