QuantumScape CEO Siva Sivaram and other executives officially inaugurate the Eagle line in San Jose.<\/p>\n Photo by: Tim Levin\/InsideEVs<\/p>\n Now that QuantumScape cells are being made on an automated production line\u2014it won\u2019t say precisely at what volume\u2014the company\u2019s tech has graduated from an interesting lab experiment to something verging on an actual product. Companies large and small have dumped enormous resources into developing solid-state batteries over the years, but none have managed to mass-produce them.<\/p>\n Some semi-solid-state vehicles, which trade a traditional battery\u2019s liquid electrolyte for a more stable gel, are available in China. And they\u2019re supposed to be on the way in the U.S., too<\/a>, by way of startups like Factorial Energy. No company has put true solid-state batteries\u2014which promise even greater performance and safety benefits\u2014into cars people can actually buy.\u00a0<\/p>\n QuantumScape has serious work ahead of it before that can happen, CTO and cofounder Tim Holme told InsideEVs<\/a> in an interview. But the company envisions its batteries hitting low-volume, high-performance vehicles by the end of the decade. And, eventually, products from household robots to stationary energy storage systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBatteries are coming online everywhere,” he said. “The long-term vision is [that QuantumScape becomes] competitive in a lot of big markets.”<\/p>\n QuantumScape’s batteries are anode-free, lithium-metal cells that use a special ceramic separator.<\/p>\n Photo by: Tim Levin\/InsideEVs<\/p>\n On the Eagle line, nickel-based cathodes and ceramic separators are laminated together to form paper-thin \u201cunit cells,\u201d which are then stacked and packaged to create the 5-amp-hour batteries that are QuantumScape\u2019s first planned commercial product. It all happens inside of rectangular, refrigerator-tall machinery humming behind clean-room glass.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the immediate term, the plan is to keep close tabs on how the line is doing\u2014its output, its yield, its uptime\u2014and on the quality of the batteries it\u2019s spitting out, Holme said. The point isn\u2019t to eventually ramp up to huge volumes, but rather to show customers that it can be done.<\/p>\n This is because QuantumScape envisions a licensing business, not a manufacturing one. Officials say the goal isn’t to become a mass-producer of solid-state batteries, but for automakers and other companies to do that themselves using its IP.\u00a0<\/p>\n Importantly, the prototype factory also gives both QuantumScape and its potential customers a lot more batteries to work with, test and learn from.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI can’t tell you how important it is to actually begin to have a higher volume of cells,\u201d said Asim Hussain, the company\u2019s chief business development and marketing officer. \u201cOne of the key intentions of the line is to create a repeatable manufacturing process, but also to mature our customer relationships by providing more technology to them. As a licensing company, that\u2019s absolutely critical.\u201d<\/p>\n QuantumScape installed its batteries in a Ducati motorcycle last year, in the first real-world demonstration of its solid-state technology.<\/p>\n Photo by: Ducati<\/p>\n Volkswagen is a significant backer, and the two companies rolled out a demonstration vehicle,\u00a0a Ducati motorcycle with QuantumScape cells,<\/a> at Germany’s IAA Munich\u00a0auto show last year. The company has said it\u2019s working with other unnamed large auto manufacturers as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n QuantumScape has targets in mind for increasing the performance of the Eagle line, and it is planning upgrades to the factory, Holme said. But even getting to automated production is a big milestone, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou might recall Tesla’s manufacturing hell,\u201d he said, referring to the famously difficult ramp-up of Model 3 production in 2018. The EV maker introduced too much automation too early and was forced to rip out the robots in favor of more human input. \u201cIf you automate too early, then the robots aren’t flexible enough to do the process you actually need, so you end up reworking, which takes a long time. It’s an important marker in the maturity of our process that we felt we knew enough to automate it,\u201d Holme said.\u00a0<\/p>\n QuantumScape battery cells can be stacked into larger packs.<\/p>\n Photo by: Tim Levin\/InsideEVs<\/p>\n Looking out a bit further, QuantumScape plans to scale up production alongside partners and has a roadmap of cell-performance improvements it aims to hit. Regular lithium-ion batteries have gotten worlds better over the decades, and Holme expects a similar pattern for solid-state tech. He notes that the first consumer-available lithium-ion batteries\u2014rolled out by Sony in 1991 in camcorders\u2014had about a third the performance of today\u2019s batteries.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe think we’re also going to have an S-curve<\/a> of improvements,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of them are incremental in the same way that lithium-ion did. Some of them are going to be more evolutionary with new materials or new architectures.\u201d<\/p>\n That raises the question: If lithium-ion batteries are so good already, and so much cheaper than ever before, where does that leave the case for solid-state?<\/p>\n \u201cThe implication for us is that it’s a competitive marketplace that we need to differentiate in terms of performance,\u201d Holme said.<\/p>\n The company doesn\u2019t aim to be the cheapest out there, but Hussain added that it\u2019ll be competitive for the performance it offers. Plus, he said, since QuantumScape\u2019s technology uses broadly the same cathode materials as other batteries\u2014high-nickel right now, but it can also accommodate cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate<\/a>\u2014the company can take advantage of strides in cost and scale realized across the industry.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Where will QuantumScape batteries debut first in the marketplace? According to Holme, the Ducati project shouldn\u2019t suggest that it will be a motorcycle. He does say that the technology will probably start out in \u201cspecialized, lower volume vehicles that are ultra high-performance.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust like Tesla introduced the Roadster first at high-end, but higher cost-areas, and then the Model S, and then the Model 3, I think likely new battery technologies would follow a similar pathway,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n QuantumScape is eyeing more mass-market cars for battery deployment as well, Holme said. But he doesn\u2019t think solid-state will necessarily take over everywhere. He expects lithium-ion and solid-state technology to coexist, but for different applications with different requirements.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be like, one battery takes all markets,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you look at things like stationary energy storage, they don’t really care about volume or mass. They care about cost and longevity. If you look at mobile applications, they care a lot about volume and mass.\u201d<\/p>\n But while many solid-state promises have gone undelivered, the race seems to be heating up as of late.\u00a0I asked Holme if he cares about being first to get solid-state batteries onto the market.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not the way I think about it. Like, who made the first smartphone? It wasn’t Apple. Who made the first social network? It wasn’t Facebook,\u201d he said, adding that winning the battery market will mean beating competitors year after year\u2014not once. \u201cWe want to go fast for a bunch of reasons. It\u2019ll help our market cap, it\u2019ll help the world to get better batteries. There\u2019s a lot of reasons we want to go fast. But I don\u2019t think race is the right framework.\u201d<\/p>\n Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \n \t\tWe want your opinion!\n\t<\/p>\n What would you like to see on Insideevs.com?<\/p>\n![\"QuantumScape](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/img-0094.jpeg\")
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