Battery technology has been improving quite rapidly in the last few years thanks to the wide adoption of electric cars. One of the leaders in this space is QuantumScape which is a company that's backed by Bill Gates and Volkswagen. It has been working on solid-state batteries and in its latest update, it claimed that its 16-layer solid-state cell can already endure 500 charge cycles which supports an anode free format. It has revealed that it is ramping up separator production. A key goal for 2022 is to reach weekly starts of over 8,000. In the past quarter, it scaled from 2,000 to 3,700.
"In Q2, we aim to complete production qualification for the majority of the tooling for the Phase 2 engineering line, including automated cell assembly tools, ultrasonic welders and cell testing systems. We continue to target the delivery of A-sample cells to at least one customer in 2022. The A sample is planned to have dozens of layers and is intended to demonstrate the core functionality of the battery cells," said QuantumScape.
Jagdeep Singh, the CEO of QuantumScape hails from New Delhi
More importantly, in the latest update, it revealed with its technology it is quickly able to ramp up the charging speeds and the battery density simultaneously, which isn't possible with standard batteries. It also revealed it has three consumer sampling agreements in place. One of these agreements includes a reservation of 5 MWh of capacity on the QS-0 production line.
"We have shipped multiple generations of cells to various customers across automotive and other applications. In Q1, our 10-layer cells were successfully tested by one automotive customer and entered the testing phase with another. These intermediate steps represent concrete progress toward our goal of shipping A sample cells in 2022," it revealed.
The Volkswagen group is likely to be the one which has reserved the 5 MWh capacity. Its Porsche brand will be leveraging its battery technology.
