Battery-Powered Future Depends on Crucial Metals: Green Insight (1)

摘要

In the big, exciting future that's measured in kilowatt- and gigawatt-hours, batteries are enabling mass electrification across many sectors. The rapid decline in battery prices has ensured burgeoning interest from electric-vehicle makers and consumer-electronics manufacturers-even from the energy industry, for enormous stationary storage systems operating on the power grid. Companies such as QuantumScape Corp. are developing next-generation batteries that could accelerate the transition. The field is so competitive that the industry is shrouded in secrecy, but the market still values the company at more than $16 billion despite no promise of real revenue for many years to come. In an exclusive story this week, Bloomberg Green went inside QuantumScape to tell the previously unreported 10-year history of one startup's push to beyond the lithium-ion technology that has dominated batteries since the 1990s. The process involved round-the-clock laboratory work-backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and investment, including from Volkswagen AG, the world's largest automaker-to create new materials. The goal: a solid-state battery capable of charging faster and driving up to 50% further than today's battery technology.