VW Partner QuantumScape: 10-Layer Solid-State Battery Development

The battery maker announced that it's already testing 10-layer solid-state battery cells.

QuantumScape

Steven Loveday

By: Steven Loveday

Jul 30, 2021 at 2:36pm ET

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American electric car battery research company QuantumScape Corporation – whose largest shareholder is Volkswagen Automotive Group – just announced that it has now advanced to testing 10-layer solid-state battery cells. This is another important indication that QuantumScape is making progress toward a commercially viable solid-state EV battery.

Several companies have been working on solid-state battery tech for years, along with other new battery chemistries. While significant progress has been made, and potential battery breakthroughs are on the horizon, there is not yet a solid-state battery application that will work in mass-produced EVs in the real world.

Companies like QuantumScape are banking on solid-state cells to reduce costs, increase range, and provide a safer option over lithium-ion cells for the future of electric vehicles. The company has made some major progress with the tech, but it still has much work to do before it can produce solid-state cells at scale, and especially those with a form factor that will makes sense for EVs.

QuantumScape says its 10-layer solid-state cells have already proven early capacity retention and recycling behavior that have been previously shown with its single- and four-layer cells. The company just announced its success with the four-layer cells in February 2021, so progress is moving along quite nicely. In a letter to shareholders about the 10-layer cells, QuantumScape wrote:

“While we need to produce and test many more such cells to collect data and statistics on their performance and reliability, this is an extremely important result."

Moving forward, the company will need to prove that the 10-layer cells can work with the larger cell formats needed for mass-produced EVs.