QuantumScape is an American company dedicated to the development of solid-state lithium metal batteries for electric cars. Recently, the entity has promised to have not only a solid-state platform that will work with any lithium-ion chemistry. After revealing their accounts for the third quarter of 2022 to shareholders, they have shown their battery cells –still as prototypes– under an interesting concept hybrid bag-shaped and prismatic.
While bag-type cells work with a flexible shell, the prismatic cells are inserted into the rigid, just like cylindrical batteries. What QuantumScape has designed is a prismatic cell with a “flexible outer layer of metallized polymer” which helps the battery deal with the expansion of its component layers due to the lithium coating that forms the anodes in these lithium metal cells.
According to the company, the flexible cell face sits about 1 millimeter inside the battery frame when fully discharged and has no anode at all. In the event that it is fully loaded, the flexible face expands and is flush with the frame. In other words, when lithium forms the anode in each of the 24 layers containing the sample cells, they add just 1mm to the batteryconsiderably less than one might expect.
The start-up San Jose, California-based battery company said this new format is ideal for dealing with “uniaxial expansion and contraction” presented by lithium metal cells. Aside from that, the new form factor also helps “dissipate excess heat during fast charging, operate with or without external pressure, and keep manufacturing and package integration simple” as well as “great packaging efficiency.” , allowing the technology to achieve our energy density goals.”
The samples that QuantumScape is creating are part of what the house calls a campaign: “the process of manufacturing and preparing cells for arrival at customers.” In fact, the reality is that it will not end up in the hands of the first customers until the company has analyzed the “collected data that establishes confidence in the performance of the finished cells”. For the automotive sector, these batteries are expected to achieve a range of 650 kilometers and a charging time of just 15 minutes.
In addition to its new cell format, the solid-state platform startup seems to has begun to arrive in the form of single layer samples to manufacturers of consumer electronics. QuantumScape has a focus on the automotive sector, but believes that everyday electronics, such as mobile phones or computers, will also benefit from its technology. Time to time, we will see them.
We say this because the company already has signed an agreement with the Volkswagen Group in order to remove the time constraint for the selection of the place to build QS-1, its first factory. It was supposed to be based in Germany, but now QuantumScape claims it could be in the US The explanation may be the energy crisis facing Germany. Building a factory there that can sit idle because it doesn’t have gas or electricity doesn’t make any sense.