Colin Langan
Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division
Yes, happy to kick off the next session with QuantumScape. We have today the CFO, Kevin Hettrich, obviously, a leader in solid-state batteries. And I think you’re going to kick it off with a short presentation that we said…
Kevin Hettrich
Chief Financial Officer
Yes, just a few minute overview of the company. So Colin, first of all, thank you for inviting us to the conference. It’s our pleasure. So QuantumScape started 15 years ago to give the world much better batteries on all the dimensions you’d care about, smaller, lighter, faster charging, safer, longer-lived and lower cost.
To do so, to make that type of dramatic change in all the elements, we wanted to change the chemistry from the lithium-ion batteries we use today to what are called solid-state lithium metal batteries. A brief primer on the difference. So lithium-ion battery, you have an anode, you have a cathode.
The way batteries work is when you charge them, lithium-ion goes from the cathode to the anode and you charge it, like rolling a ball up the hill. When you want the energy back, it goes in the opposite direction. It’s called lithium-ion battery because when you charge it, the lithium is stored in an ionic state.
It’s held in a kind of a graphite silicon organic electrolyte layer. What we’re working on commercializing in solid-state lithium metal. It’s called lithium metal because in the charge state instead of being that kind of sponge that of host material, there’s nothing there as we manufacture the device.
