QS Blueprint for the Future of Energy Storage

By Dr. Siva Sivaram, President and CEO

Today, the world’s energy system is experiencing rapid change. The way we create, store and use energy is undergoing a once-in-a-century transformation. Thanks to QuantumScape’s years of careful planning, consistent execution and constancy of vision, we are perfectly positioned to capitalize on this transformation. 

Last year, we laid out the strategic blueprint for taking our solid-state lithium-metal battery technology to market. With a year of work behind us, let’s review our blueprint and look at the road ahead.  

QS is a technology company. We concentrate on what we do best: develop, demonstrate, and distribute groundbreaking battery technology. To achieve global impact, we work with partners across the value chain, from materials suppliers and equipment designers to OEMs in automotive and other industries. Orchestrating this ecosystem of partnerships is what our Strategic Blueprint is all about: it lets us think big while staying focused. 

Demonstration 

The first public demonstration reveal was at IAA Mobility in Munich last year: the Ducati V21L race bike. This is an extremely demanding application, which requires high energy density and high power, high charge rates for regenerative braking, no pressure application mechanisms, and better safety. The launch at IAA Mobility was just a sneak preview; this year we plan full field testing of the V21L.  

Ducati V21L powered by QS batteries at IAA Mobility in September 2025

These types of automotive demonstrations help us engage with automakers that need differentiated technology to remain competitive in the fast-moving EV market. We’re working closely with top-10 global automakers in Europe, North America and Japan. This massive and important market remains our core focus.

We are demonstrating our cell in other applications as well, like a drone carrying a commercially relevant payload. Drones and defense aerospace are major growth markets for our high-performance solid-state battery. In addition to our safer solid-state design, our technology offers a unique advantage. Conventional lithium-ion batteries use graphite that is almost exclusively Chinese, and for defense customers, that’s a major pain point. Our technology is graphite-free.

Drone powered by QS battery technology

Autos and drones are just the start: As we move into new market segments, such as AI data center power solutions and robotics, we believe that our differentiated technology also delivers value for these emerging applications. For example, the superior safety of our solid-state design lets us serve markets where lithium-ion remains too risky, like in the racks of a multi-billion-dollar data center.

We’re not just demonstrating the products, we’re also demonstrating the process to make our cell technology, with our new Eagle Line. Eagle Line is a suite of equipment, processes, materials and software that we can use to demonstrate to our partners the scalable production of QS battery cells with high quality, low cycle time and at-scale cost entitlement. The Eagle Line will become a platform that we can transfer to our licensing and manufacturing partners.

Equipment on the QS Eagle Line

Distribution

The second part of our blueprint is distribution. We are distributing our technology know-how to world-class partners that represent individual links in the overall value chain. QS remains at the center of this ecosystem, orchestrating smooth collaboration among our partners.

This model has already been proven out in the semiconductor industry by companies like ASML, TSMC and Nvidia: each partner captures a slice of the pie while retaining their incentive to grow the pie for everyone. We view this business model as the best way to create and capture value for our shareholders.

Over the past year, we have made very important additions to the QS ecosystem: Murata Manufacturing and Corning, two of the world’s most sophisticated ceramics manufacturing companies are now part of our ecosystem, to bring the ceramic separator at the heart of our technology into high-volume manufacturing.

They both bring large balance sheets, world-class teams, and a track record of manufacturing excellence in technical ceramics. In addition, they are excited by our groundbreaking Cobra separator production process and massive potential markets for our battery technology.

This is a perfect illustration of how our ecosystem model works. Going forward, we will continue to add to our ecosystem, including equipment licensees and materials suppliers who can serve our manufacturing partners as they scale up to mass production.

Development

The third part of our blueprint is development. To make sure our ecosystem stays competitive, we must keep moving the technology frontier forward.

Technology products tend to improve over time along an S-curve of development. While conventional lithium-ion batteries have reached the top of their S-curve, QS technology is ascending upward. Even as we are maturing our first-generation product, we are constantly pathfinding to develop future generations of our technology.

Our roadmap plans future generations of cells that offer larger capacity, packaging optimization and cathode chemistry innovations, to improve performance, reduce cost and fit new application requirements. This year we are committed to revealing the next step on our technology roadmap.

Conclusion

This is our Strategic Blueprint to bring our technology to global markets, and we have made substantive progress on that plan in a short time. Our team of battery scientists is second to none, and their passion and dedication is what makes this ambitious strategy possible.

We will continue to execute aggressively on this plan as we demonstrate our product and process, distribute our technology across the broader QS ecosystem, and develop new generations of technology advancements to push the frontier of what’s possible. This is how we revolutionize energy storage.