In recent A-sample tests at the laboratories of PowerCo, the Volkswagen Group’s battery company, a solid-state battery from QuantumScape achieved more than 1,000 charging cycles while retaining more than 95 percent capacity. This translates to a potential battery life of 500,000 km with no significant loss of vehicle range.

Solid-state battery technology promises longer ranges, shorter charging times and greater safety. The latest results represent an important milestone on the road to series production. The tested solid-state cell consists of 24 layers, and thus already corresponds to the planned production cell. The next step will be to perfect and scale the manufacturing processes.

In the standardized test procedures for newly developed battery cells, robustness is considered the most important criterion. The industry-standard targets for this development phase are 700 charging cycles and a maximum capacity loss of 20 percent. QuantumScape’s solid-state cell significantly exceeded these specifications in the latest test, and also met requirements for other test criteria such as fast-charging capability, safety and self-discharge.

“These are very encouraging results that impressively underpin the potential of the solid-state cell,” said PowerCo CEO Frank Blome. “The final result of this development could be a battery cell that enables long ranges, can be charged super-quickly, and practically does not age. We are continuing to work at full speed with our partner QuantumScape towards series production.”

“These results make clear that QuantumScape’s anodeless solid-state lithium-metal cells are capable of exceptional performance,” said Jagdeep Singh, founder and CEO of QuantumScape. “While we have more work to do to bring this technology to market, we are not aware of any other automotive-format lithium-metal battery that has shown such high discharge energy retention over a comparable cycle count under similar conditions.”

Source: Volkswagen Group