“Even as researchers since then have managed to enable a massive lithium-ion economy of portable electronic devices, they have never gotten beyond inserting just a small few crumbs of the metal into the batteries powering iPhones, Tesla automobiles, and Chromebooks. Pure lithium has remained the Holy Grail – the presumed best consumer battery possible using currently known principles and technology, but always out of reach since no one could figure out how to actually deploy the metal without the risk of fire.
Now, in a colossal claim, QuantumScape, a 10-year-old San Jose, California, startup backed by Bill Gates, said in an interview that it has resolved lithium’s problems, and that VW, the giant German automaker, expects to have cars using pure metallic lithium in their batteries on the road by 2025. Jagdeep Singh, QuantumScape’s CEO, also announced that the company is going public, using a so-called SPAC to list on the New York Stock Exchange in the fourth quarter. The post-listing valuation would be $4.3 billion, Singh said. In a SPAC, a company goes public by merging with an existing, listed shell company….”
marker.medium.com/vw-one-ups-tesla-with-a-revolutionary-battery-breakthrough-be51849ea092