| From: Cooters | 2/25/2021 11:53:59 AM | | | | | | Here's a counterpoint article, counter to the CEO's very compelling point about achieving a multi-level cell breakthrough.
QS Stock Still a Risky Gamble With Investor Lawsuits Pending | InvestorPlace
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Last month, Brian Morin wrote a piece on Seeking Alpha that shocked QuantumScape believers. While acknowledging that the company’s science was “very good,” he also concluded thus: “Their batteries are small and unproven – not yet as big as an iWatch battery, and never tested outside a lab.”
He went on to question whether the technology they claim to have is even possible.
“[Making such a battery capable of running an EV] is hard – very, very hard,” Morin said. “So hard, in fact, that nobody has done it. I’ve read many dozens of research papers where scientists have tried … but then apologize for the lack of a complete working battery, and lay out the significant challenges ahead.”
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PS - I don't have an issue with the second paragraph BTW, of course it hasn't been done, that would be the lure if QS can do it. My concern is how far long along the path from science project to commercial product is QS and are they $23B (market cap) along that path. Cooters |
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| From: Carkey | 2/26/2021 9:44:37 AM | | | | | | this is an interesting bit from the same seeking alpha article indicating QS' target architecture would not be state of the art when they achieve it
Energy Density: They talk about being able to get to an energy density of 400 Wh/kg, which would be great. However, they clearly have not yet, as all their graphs are normalized to 100%, not to an actual capacity. And Amprius is already making cells with 450 Wh/kg, and Tesla claimed on their Battery Day that they could achieve 350 Wh/kg. So, while nice, this energy density they hope to achieve in 2028 will not beat today's state of the art, and will not be state of the art when it is achieved.
I need to study that Jan article in more depth to learn more of the problems with making an ASSB. |
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| From: Carkey | 3/11/2021 10:02:13 PM | | | | | | While they do not make an ASSB, CUBERG from Emeryville California and just purchased by Sweden's Northvolt uses lithium metal but a Non-Flammable liquid electrolyte.
Cuberg | Home
Cuberg’s batteries are based on an innovative non-flammable electrolyte combined with a lightweight lithium metal anode. Verified in 2020 by the U.S. Department of Energy, our cell architecture radically increases energy density and power while ensuring product reliability and safety.
Moreover, our technology is optimally designed for rapid commercialization. Rather than requiring new production techniques, Cuberg batteries are fully compatible with current manufacturing technology. This gives our customers the confidence that they can scale up quickly, enabling them to focus on bringing transformative new mobility solutions to market.
I cannot determine what temperature parameters their batteries are expected to operate within.
CUBERG has been working primarily with Boeing and flight mobility technology but NORTHVOLT is s Volkswagen partner:
Volkswagen Battery Partner Northvolt Snaps Up Cuberg And Aims For 1000Wh/l (forbes.com) |
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| From: Carkey | 3/15/2021 11:58:20 PM | | | | | | From Reuters article - 'Volkswagen takes aim at Tesla with own European gigafactories.'
Volkswagen takes aim at Tesla with own European gigafactories | Reuters
Most of this article shows the show the quickly changing EV landscape. I am not proposing that Volkswagen's strategy is going to dominate. But is does demonstrate what one of QS's investors is doing to insure they are a winner in the EV market place
Volkswagen growth strategy
· First 40 GWh would come from Sweden’s Northvolt, with production starting in 2023.
· Then will raise its 20% stake in Northvolt and also take over the Swedish firm’s stake in a planned battery cell venture in the German city of Salzgitter, which will form the second factory from 2025.
· Followed by a factory in Spain, France or Portugal in 2026
· Then additions somewhere in Poland, Slovakia or the Czech Republic by 2027
· Finally, two more plants will be set up by 2030.
Fast-charging points:
· Partnerships with oil major BP as well as top European utilities Enel and Iberdrola, Volkswagen aims to operate about 18,000 public fast-charging points in Europe by 2025.
· In North America, Volkswagen targets 3,500 fast-charging points by the end of 2021 via its Electrify America unit,
· while in China, the world’s largest car market, the group aims for 17,000 by 2025.
About battery tech:
Shifting to design, Volkswagen unveiled plans to have a new unified prismatic battery cell from 2023, which will support cost cuts generated by the higher level of in-house cell production and could impact its current suppliers.
· Electric vehicle makers, including Tesla, are using cylindrical battery cells, which resemble flashlight batteries and are relatively inexpensive and easy to manufacture.
· Prismatic cells, which resemble a thin hardcover book, are housed in a rectangular metal case and are more expensive.
· Pouch cells, another alternative, are thinner and lighter, and resemble a flexible metal mailing envelope.
Someone needs to check me on this but I believe QS’s development centers around ‘Pouch Cells’ |
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 3/22/2021 6:58:15 PM | | | | | | Smart move. Take advantage of a hot market and build up the war chest.
QuantumScape Announces Proposed Public Offering of Class A Common Stock
March 22, 2021 05:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time
SAN JOSE, Calif.--( BUSINESS WIRE)--QuantumScape Corporation (NYSE: QS), today commenced an underwritten public offering of 13,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock being offered by QuantumScape. QuantumScape intends to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,950,000 shares of Class A common stock. The offering is subject to market conditions, and there can be no assurance as to whether or when the offering may be completed, or as to the actual size or terms of the offering.
QuantumScape intends to use the net proceeds it receives from the offering to build a larger QS-0 pre-pilot line than recently announced; to cover its full share of equity contributions to its joint venture with VW for the previously disclosed 20GWh expansion of QS-1 joint manufacturing facility; and for working capital and general corporate purposes.
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Morgan Stanley are acting as joint lead book-running managers for the Offering. Deutsche Bank Securities is acting as an additional book-running manager.
The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. A preliminary prospectus related to the offering has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and is available on the SEC’s website at cts.businesswire.com. Copies of the preliminary prospectus may also be obtained by contacting: Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, by phone at (866) 471-2526, or by email at prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com; or Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014.
A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy these securities be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
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Story Link |
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| From: FactsOnly | 4/14/2021 3:33:21 PM | | | | | | Here is an article that is positive on QuantumScape stock's current valuation. Summary: Yes the concerns about the share dilution are valid but keep in mind the new stock issuance will be used to "build a larger QS-0 pre-pilot line". Also the value of QS stock already pulled back significantly because of these concerns. QuantumScape “ successfully met the technical milestone that was a condition to close for the investment of an additional $100 million by Volkswagen.
investorplace.com |
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| From: FactsOnly | 4/15/2021 3:35:12 PM | | | | | | | Scorpion Capital is shorting QS. "We are short Quantumscape (QS): A Pump and Dump SPAC Scam By Silicon Valley Celebrities, That Makes Theranos Look Like Amateurs." I am not impressed with their powerpoint presentation and past performance. But they do raise a lot of reasonable doubts. |
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| To: FactsOnly who wrote (12) | 4/16/2021 8:37:47 AM | | From: ynotgoal | | | | A Short-Seller Attack on QuantumScape Reveals a Forlorn New Reality for Exotic Batteries
themobilist.medium.com
As great as they might be, the best may not be good enough to dislodge trusted lithium-ion
QuantumScape, the sizzling darling of battery investors from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, Europe and beyond, is the object of a fierce short-selling attack. Its assailant is Scorpion Capital, a little-known guerrilla outfit that yesterday released a 188-page, scorched-earth indictment that, in bold, black-and-red font and yellow highlight pen, accused QuantumScape of fraud and other transgressions. QuantumScape’s share price plunged 12.2% by the close of trading.
The report is a relentless, repetitive, often reckless assault that detracts from numerous valid doubts about QuantumScape: As of now, the startup hasn’t produced an actual battery, but only a cell half the size, in ampere-hours, of an Apple Watch. QuantumScape makes much of its supposedly liberal release of data, but many of its battery peers think it’s actually been pretty miserly, and that the data it has released has led to just more questions.
Scorpion made a particularly incendiary accusation: that QuantumScape’s management, while allegedly hiding all these problems, intends to “pump and dump” the stock — to unload their shares after their “lockup” period, the usual time in which employees must wait before selling any stock. In fact, the 150-day lockup period for QuantumScape employees does appear to lift right around the last week of this month, according to its S4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If that is correct, QuantumScape employees and executives could then sell shares as long as the stock price is at least $12 for any subsequent 20 days within a 30-trading-day period (since they went on sale, QuantumScape shares have never sold for less than $35.85, the price yesterday). Senior executives could sell 25% of their shares.
But there is more to this period for QuantumScape and a dozen or so high-flying battery startups, all promising exotic successors to lithium-ion, the workhorse formulation in every electric vehicle, smart phone, laptop and nearly every other portable electronic device: Some or even most these startups may end up failing — they may simply not manage to make the jump from the lab to the gargantuan scale required to make money in batteries.
Yet, if some do collapse, it may not matter all that much, battery experts tell me. This is because lithium-ion itself has come so far, and appears to have much further to go. Lithium-ion’s cost and performance appear headed to a mid-decade inflection point that would profoundly curtail the advantage of moving to one of the long-sought battery breakthroughs.
That is, for decades battery researchers have aspired to invent a pure lithium-metal battery — what QuantumScape is working on — and obtain 50% or even more energy than conventional cells. But Dan Steingart, a materials science professor at Columbia University, told me that by the middle of the decade, the performance edge from lithium-metal may only be in the low double-digit percentages. By then, the average cost of lithium-ion batteries is projected to drop to around $100 per kilowatt-hour, the break-even point with conventional gasoline-driven power trains, and to keep dropping from there. Electric vehicles will then cost the same as internal combustion. “If QuantumScape fails, it won’t matter a bit because lithium-ion batteries will already have done most of what they need to for EVs,” Steingart said. “There are pathways to get to $50 to $60 a kilowatt hour. When that happens, that will be all that matters.”
“Lithium-ion and advanced lithium-ion have already won the race and are here to stay,” Tyler Lancaster, a principal with Energize Ventures in Chicago, told me in a video call yesterday.
The attack on QuantumScape is in a way unsurprising: For a decade, QuantumScape and its CEO, Jagdeep Singh, were among the most secretive battery startups anywhere. But, since emerging from stealth and going public in November as part of the Spac mania, the company has gradually transformed into a comparative chatterbox: Singh has appeared on CNBC regularly, explaining how QuantumScape’s material will be in a commercial VW by 2024, and was the subject of a big spread in Bloomberg just this week. He has been the subject of numerous stories here at The Mobilist, including this one in September, by far the most popular battery piece produced by Medium the last seven months, beating out even Tesla.
Which is to say that QuantumScape has been the “it” battery company, a stature reflected in its shares, which soared as high as $131 last December, 13 times their initial price. The San Jose, California company has been bound to attract the attention of short sellers, especially since it doesn’t actually earn any revenue, and won’t until at least the middle of the decade, when it expects its battery system to be deployed in a VW.
The Scorpion assault is way over the top, throwing around references to Theranos, the blood test device fraud, and other scams like so much salt and pepper. Battery experts have been scathing: “I call bullshit on this report,” tweeted Jordi Sastre, a Swiss Ph.D student studying solid-state batteries. “I went through the slide deck and found nothing that hadn’t already been openly discussed in the battery community or communicated by [QuantumScape] itself. I’m specially disgusted by the shady analysis by a supposed expert and the amount of misrepresentations.”
“I couldn’t find a single statement that hasn’t already been raised and isn’t obvious,” Sam Jaffe, head of Cairn Research, a battery research firm, told me. “It’s all regurgitation. I read the Hindenburg report on Nikola. It was devastating. It showed all kinds of data, photographs and clear evidence that things were not right. There’s nothing like that in this report.”
QuantumScape itself responded with an 11-tweet thread just after the market close. It said in part that it “stands by its data, which speaks for itself. We have provided higher transparency than any other solid-state battery effort we are aware of, with details on current density, temp, cycle life, cathode thickness, depth of discharge, cell area, pressure.” VW, QuantumScape’s lead investor, declined to comment.
One might ask, as I have numerous times, why QuantumScape doesn’t simply put all the doubts to rest by paying for an independent, third-party validation of its system. So far, Singh has refused. |
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