CATL beats Tesla to humanoid robots matching skilled worker performance in mass EV battery production

While Tesla is reportedly struggling with the Optimus robot performance on the factory floors due to overheating joints and frequent breakdowns of the complex hand mechanism, CATL bragged that it has achieved the first successful humanoid robot deployment in mass EV battery production.

Commissioned at scale, the Moz robot developed by CATL's Spirit AI subsidiary is manning "the world's first power battery pack production line to achieve large-scale deployment of humanoid embodied intelligence robots," tips the world's biggest battery maker.

The Moz robot's tasks are not simple like Tesla's video of Optimus picking up and placing 4680 battery cells in a crate, either. It is deployed at critical quality assurance junctures, where the humanoid robot has to perform tasks like attaching the battery connectors with a degree of precision and speed that CATL says now match those of its "skilled human workers."

The Moz robots have hit 99% insertion success rate by using an end-to-end vision model that adapts them to "material position deviations and connection point changes, continuously modifying their operational posture in real-time." CATL's humanoid robot can also reliably gauge the force it has to apply to secure the harness in place without damaging the thin wires. "Moz demonstrated strong environmental perception and task generalization capabilities," claims CATL.

China is currently awash in humanoid robot AI companies that some analysts warn have already surpassed the overcapacity that made it a global EV and battery leader, so news like CATL's Moz robot deployment at mass production lines are not entirely surprising.

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