00:00We heard Mr. Zhang talk yesterday about, basically, your storage system, sodium batteries, are ready for production.
00:08That's right.
00:08Tell me how that helps and how ready it is for production and for commercialization.
00:14Yes, we have been investing in sodium battery for quite a few years.
00:21Internally, we have already gone through several iterations.
00:25For different application scenarios, we have the best design for each application scenario.
00:32For example, last year, Dr. Zhang mentioned about the EV, and this year we'll roll out in volume production for
00:40EV application.
00:41For that application, we care about the low temperature, in particular for northern markets.
00:47And people worry about, in the cold, minus 20, minus 30, can you restart?
00:54Can you drive the design range?
00:57So we came up with a novel design, which can perform at that kind of extreme condition.
01:03And this year, Dr. Zhang mentioned that we'll have this large energy storage solution.
01:09Again, we design for the long cycle life, and we're talking about the 20, 25 years life cycle, and also
01:18the cost effectiveness.
01:20Because sodium is an alternative to lithium, and so we take different approaches.
01:27So what kind of cost differential are we talking about for this dual-track strategy, if you will?
01:31You're still going to be doing lithium-ion, but obviously it has more energy intensity and heat sensitivity, or temperature
01:39suites, whereas you have a more cost-effective sodium battery.
01:42Does it have as much energy intensity?
01:45Well, in terms of energy density, sodium ion battery is not there yet.
01:51Probably, I'll say, for a certain application, that's good enough.
01:55That's ideal for that working temperature we talked about, and also the thermal sensitivity.
02:00So sodium battery for storage, for example, and we don't care about the energy density that much, but the performance
02:10in a wider temperature range and a longer cycle life are the design criteria.
02:16So we design for that application.
02:18What makes it ideal for data centers, which are exploding?
02:21Obviously, China has earmarking lots of money for nationwide network of data centers, given the AI boom.
02:27Well, given the AI data center required a very different power supply, and because in milliseconds, you need to search
02:37the power requirements three, five times when people curious about a particular AI algorithm and demand a very sharply demand.
02:46So current grid is not that ideal for supply to AI DC, so CATL is designing AI DC has a
02:58combined performance of supercapacitor plus DC ion battery.
03:03So it will give you both instant demand search, but also have a longer duration and a large energy density.
03:13You're the chief manufacturing officer, so how ready are you to scale up, and what kind of demand do you
03:17expect?
03:18We already, this year, we're going to put more than one gigawatt hour energy storage system in place.
03:27Because when we start this volume production, we need to ramp up our supply.
03:32Currently, our bottleneck is in the supply, and do they have enough capacity to produce a kind of raw material
03:39for us?
03:39And for the vehicle, this year, we're going to see maybe 10,000 to 20,000 vehicles carry CATL sodium
03:48battery in the market.
03:49The other thing Robin Zhang was talking about, the chairman, Dr. Zhang, yesterday here at the World Economic Forum, which
03:55got a lot of buzz going.
03:56And that is, it's something Elon Musk has talked about as well, is about harnessing the compute power and the
04:02energy power in idle EVs.
04:04There are a lot of them. I think there are, what, 40 million EVs in China, many of them overnight
04:09sitting idle.
04:10So you can create token factories.
04:12Is this a moonshot idea, or is this really possible to kind of harness the collective compute and power, energy
04:20power, in these idle EVs to be able to fuel agentic AI?
04:25This is more close to the reality, not compared to the data center in the space.
04:31This is real on the Earth. It's available right now.
04:35Each of the new generation, intelligent, smart EVs, they have so much computational power to navigate the surrounding, to conduct
04:45the autonomous driving.
04:47When you're not driving the vehicle, when you go to work, out of 24 hours, you only use the vehicle
04:52for one or two hours.
04:54And when you park in the world, and you have an energy supply, usually have more than 100 kilowatt hours
05:00in the vehicle, plus the computational power.
05:04If we can create a platform, we have solved both computational power and energy supply problems.
05:10Well, that's the challenge, right? You need to build the infrastructure to do this, because there is vehicle-to-grid
05:15technology, where that's the power transmission, the energy generation.
05:20But how do you get the data and that to those systems?
05:25Well, you need a platform to do that.
05:27Exactly. We need to create a new platform, because the data link, uplink, downlink, it already exists.
05:33Because many of the vehicle has the capability to do the OTA, over-the-air upgrading for the software.
05:41But we need to upgrade. If you want to use that as a distributed AIDC, we need to upgrade the
05:49bandwidth.
05:49But now 5G, 6G is coming, and this is, I think, technically, it's quite feasible.
05:55How long will it take, do you think, for building a platform?
05:58This depends on the drive of AIDC. When the token cost becomes so expensive, people look for solutions.
06:06We have 40 million vehicles, EVs, in the market.
06:09If you think about it multiplied by that power, the energy power, and competition power, that's a huge resource.
06:17We will tap into that.
06:18Last year, you and I talked in Tianjin about the number one priority being international expansion for CATL.
06:25We know you're producing in Germany. You have a gigafactory coming online, almost momentarily, in Hungary.
06:32When is that going to start putting output of batteries?
06:34Well, we are already ready. In terms of production, we are already ready.
06:38We are waiting for the final approval for the government to give a green light.
06:44Well, they have a new government in place.
06:46Exactly.
06:46Victor Orban is out.
06:47Yes, we are waiting for that transition to settle down.
06:50I think we are very close to have the production launch anytime soon as we speak.
06:56Any stumbling blocks or hurdles with the new government?
06:58No, no, no.
06:58We are very cooperative, work with the new government, and everything is set for the final green light.
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